The Neatest Little Paper Ever Read
TIDBITS® SALUTES NURSES
by Kathy Wolfe
National Nurses’ Week is commemorated May 6 – 12, giving Tidbits the opportunity to investigate this honorable profession
• The name of Florence Nightingale is a familiar one to most and is synonymous with the field of nursing. Nightingale came from a well-to-do English family, who desired her to settle into her social and financial class. But Florence had different ambitions, and against the wishes of her family, pursued nursing, completing her formal studies at an institute in Dusseldorf, Germany. She gained notoriety during the Crimean War, which broke out in 1853. She and 38 volunteer nurses journeyed to Scutari in the Ottoman Empire where British soldiers were enduring cholera, dysentery, typhus, and chronic diarrhea, with more of the wounded perishing from these diseases than from their battle wounds. Many of the deaths were caused by unsanitary practices, and Nightingale established a program of sanitation and hygiene since, unbelievably, handwashing with soap and water was not normal procedure. In 1860, she established the first professional school of nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London. Her book “Notes on Nursing” was used as the principal textbook. Her training school still exists today as part of London’s Kings’ College. turn the page for more!
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NURSES (continued):
• Clara Barton got her start in nursing as a young girl when her brother David fell off the barn roof and she nursed him back to health. Yet nursing didn’t become her profession at a young age. An academicallygifted person, she became a teacher at 17, going on to become a New Jersey school headmaster. Clara followed this up with a position as a clerk for the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., where she was working when the Civil War broke out. Wounded soldiers overflowed the city’s streets, and a makeshift hospital was established in the Capitol. Clara tended to the injured, although she had no formal nursing training. Before long, she was a battlefield nurse, applying dressings, distributing supplies, and writing letters for soldiers while traveling with the Union Army. Because she had recorded personal information of the soldiers she cared for, she wrote letters to families informing them of missing, wounded, or dead soldiers. After the war ended, she formed the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States. She and 12 others researched the status of thousands of soldiers, eventually identifying over 22,000 missing soldiers, and responding to upwards of 63,000 inquiries.
• Badly in need of a rest following her wartime duties, Clara Barton traveled to Switzerland for respite. Here she learned about a humanitarian organization called the Red Cross. She met with President Chester Arthur and convinced him of the need for a group that would give aid during disasters. She founded the American Red Cross in 1881 and provided relief to victims of Pennsylvania’s deadly Johnstown Flood, and hurricanes and tidal waves in South Carolina and Texas.
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Tommy Tidbits is hiding In this issue of TidbitsMOV
HENSLER’S HENSLER’S
SPORTS STORIES: BED RACING
The Kentucky Derby might be the big news this week, but there’s another exciting event that precedes this first leg of the Triple Crown. This week, Tidbits heads to a different kind of race … bed racing!
• For the past 35 years, the Kentucky Derby Festival has hosted the Great Bed Races, a competition in which teams of five create a racing cart from beds on wheels. Four wheels and a steering wheel are added to a standard full-sized bed powered, not by an engine, but by four people and their driver. A figure-eight-shaped course is equipped with orange cones for the race. Of course, the fastest team is the winner, but there are also prizes for Best Decorated Bed, Most Entertaining, People’s Choice, and Cone Eater.
• This bizarre sport got its start in the North Yorkshire, England town of Knaresborough in 1965 as a charity fundraiser. The inaugural race was only open to the British Army, Navy, and American Marines, but the International Great Bed Race has been modified to include anyone. The Knaresborough event has now grown to 90 teams of six runners and a passenger, 630 people battling each other through a 2.4-mile (3.9-km) course that begins with a climb up a steep hill. This race isn’t a “land-only” one – the final stretch of the course leads teams through the icy waters of the River Nidd, requiring the beds to have the ability to float. Creative costumes and fancy themedecorated beds contribute to the merriment.
• Crew members include the pilot, who steers the bed, the pushers who provide the momentum and driving force, and the support crew who assist with pit stops. (Continued page #7)
