Florence Nightingale | Autograph letter signed, from the General Hospital at Balaclava, May 1856

Florence Nightingale

Autograph letter signed, to "My dear Sir"

requesting that he "deliver the boy, Win Jones, with one leg amputated at the thigh, at our Quarters, Barrack Hospital, Scutari", 1 page, 4to, General Hospital, Balaclava, 22 May 1856, integral blank, folds

AN UNCOMMON LETTER BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE FROM THE CRIMEA. Florence Nightingale's eighteen months nursing the wounded from the Crimean War, mostly spent at the military hospital at Scutari, opposite Constantinople, brought her great fame but were of course a relatively short interlude in a long life. The vast majority of Nightingale's surviving letters are from later in her life. This letter is written from the Crimean Peninsular itself. Hostilities had ended by time of writing this letter, and Nightingale was evidently engaged in winding down the field hospital at Balaclava.