Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Conditions in the grim, vermin-infested army barracks at Scutari, Turkey, converted to a military hospital for British soldiers wounded in the war against Russia in the Crimea, were far beyond anything Florence Nightingale or her team of 38 nurses had anticipated: sick and dying soldiers, most of them suffering from cholera dysentery, lay everywhere--in Scutari, war wounds accounted for only one death in six… With improved sanitation, death rates at Scutari soon begin to fall, and when Nightingale returned to England in 1856, she was welcomed as a national heroine…In 1907, she became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit." [1001 Days]