Do You Agree With The View That Mary Seacole, And

998 Words4 Pages
I deem that is would be more accurate to state the Mary Seacole is a much greater figure of mercy, kindness and braveness to influence the British soldiers than Florence Nightingale. Although Nightingale received all the credit through wealth influential people at The Times newspaper such as William Russel and Sidney Herbert, she would also been given preferable treatment to Mary Seacole as of serious racial prejudice. Also to do with the fact Seacole was at the frontline as stated in source V. She would often be on hand in the battlefield giving direct treatment, this being another factor as too why the term ‘ Angle of mercy’ is more applicable to Seacole than Nightingale. It can be assumed that Source U is in fact government propaganda and does not reflect the true conditions of Scutari in 1856. It is a modernist painting, designed not on the basis of actual experience of Scutari and without the added bonus of hindsight, it is more based on a reflection of British public view of Scutari and Nightingales reforms. The Lithograph shows the hospital as being uncharacteristically clean and open, it shows there being very few patients with plenty of Doctors and Nurses. However the actual situation was much different to that portrayed in the lithograph, patients were wallowing in squalor and filth, with their only being 18 inches between very overcrowded beds. The hospital at Scutari was also known to be severely understaffed, especially in qualified surgeons, all of this is actually described by Nightingale’s biography. Another deviation from that true image of Scutari is that in the source the windows are portrayed as being open, we know this cannot be true as it was only until after Lord Palmerstone’s Sanitary Commission did the hospital at Scutari realised that by improving ventilation would it ‘save a great deal of lives’. It was only until after this did
Open Document