Florence Nightingale – School Report

Florence Nightingale

Strike A Light School for Nurses

Name of Pupil: NIGHTINGALE, Florence

Age: 16

Subject: Basic Nursing

Does Florence have trouble with her eyesight? It’s the only explanation I can think of to account for her extremely poor performance in this subject.

Take her method of finding out what’s wrong with young children, for instance: whacking them in various places and asking ‘does it hurt there?’ is no substitute for actually looking for symptoms. Poor little Walter Nitt is just one example.

Admittedly Florence did a quite beautiful job of putting his broken leg in plaster, but the fact remains that Walter only came in to have his verruca scraped. And then to ask the poor boy’s parents for five pounds, claiming that ‘all breakages must be paid for,’ was to add insult to injury.

Poor eyesight might also explain the terrible mix up when I gave Florence two other simple jobs: firstly to dab some ointment on Milly Ming’s gnat bites with cotton wool, and then to give some of the school’s rusty pipework a good rubbing down with wire wool. The result was disastrous. The cotton wool made absolutely no impression on the pipework, and as for poor Milly’s gnat bites…

Maybe Florence needs help to see things more clearly; a pair of spectacles, perhaps, or a lamp to light the way. Yes, a lamp would be most appropriate. She’s certainly been getting on my wick.

Anna Sthetic

Sister (no relation)