The Lady with the Lamp at Scutari

When Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital in Scutari, Turkey, in November 1854, she stepped into a darkness that had nothing to do with the hour. Wounded soldiers from the Crimean War lay on filthy floors, packed so tightly nurses could barely walk between them. Sewage seeped beneath the wards. Rats skittered along the walls. The mortality rate had climbed above forty percent — and the military authorities insisted everything was fine.…