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Military and civilian nurses from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Vilseck Army Health Clinic and Ramstein Clinic visited historic medical sites in Istanbul and Western Turkey to enrich their understanding of hospitals and nursing through the past 2,000 years. Lois Borsay, from LRMC, arranged the tour, which was booked by RTT Ramstein and Baritli Travel in Istanbul.
“The Florence Nightingale museum was one of the highlights of the trip,” said Capt. Johnnie Barrett, Ramstein Clinic nurse.
And Capt. Tammy Edwards, chief of Population Health at LRMC agreed.
“I didn’t realize how touched I would be actually standing in the place where professional nursing as we know it was established,” she said.
Florence Nightingale headed the British nursing staff from 1854 to 1856 during the Crimean War.
“She is considered the founder of the modern profession of nursing,” Ms. Borsay said. “Her book, ‘Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not,’ is still used in nursing schools today.”
Scotari Barracks, which housed the British Command during the Crimean War, is now known as Selimiye Barracks and is part of the Turkish 1st Army Group.
Ms. Borsay applied for entry several months before the tour to give the Turkish Army time to conduct appropriate security review. In order to gain access to the museum, tour participants had to pass a security check and passport review. All electronics, including cameras and cell phones, had to be left outside the complex.
As the group walked from the main entrance to the museum, the sun shone through the arched windows of the interior courtyard, spilling across the hallways where wounded soldiers had rested on wooden pallets provided by Ms. Nightingale.
The museum, located in the rooms where she lived and worked, contains original furniture and her original letter to aspiring nurses. During the visit, Col. Iris West, chief Army Nurse, Medical Management, MBEDDC, presented a coin medallion to Maj. Mustapha Demir of the 1st Army.
“On behalf of Army Nurse Corps Officers and our entire group I want to present you with this Army Nurse Corps coin as a thank you for your hospitality in allowing us to come into your jeadquarters to visit the Florence Nightingale Museum,” Colonel West said. “It means a great deal to us.”
Major Mustapha received the medallion to applause from the visitors.
After three days in Istanbul, some of the group returned to Germany while others continued on through Western Anatolia on the western side of Turkey. The tour stopped at Troy, Pammukale/Hierapolis, Pergamum, Sirince, Kasadusi and Ephesus. Of particular interest to the nursing group were two ancient hospitals at Hierapolis and Asclepion. A local citizen who had been cured at Asclepion in Greece founded a medical center of the same name at Pergamum. Galen, one of the world’s earliest physicians, practiced here from A.D. 131 to 210. Treatments included massage, mud baths, drinking sacred water and the use of herbs and salves.
The American nurses were amused by the use of dream analysis for diagnosis and horrified by treatment of mental illness by shutting patients into underground tunnels.
The medical center at Hierapolis is even older than Asclepion. Possibly founded in the fourth century B.C. but certainly by 190 B.C., treatment at Hierapolis focused on the use of the naturally occurring mineral and hot springs at Pammukale.
As the calcium-rich water flows downhill and cools, it has built an unusual ridge of calcium carbonate that UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site in 1988.
Hierapolis served as a hospital for more than 1,000 years until it was abandoned after a major earthquake in the 1300s.
