From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Now I can tell the rest about Florence Nightingale….

She lived to be a very old lady and if it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t have nice clean hospitals or nice clean nurses today because before Florence began nursing, they did all kinds of terrible things to sick people, they really didn’t know very much, especially about cleanliness. They always kept the windows shut tight and everyone thought that night air was unhealthy but Florence asked her doctor about night air when she was very young and she doubted that the air at night was any different than the air during the day. That was very smart of her, wasn’t it? And in the hospitals, they let the very sick sleep with people who had all kinds of other things wrong with them and then they all got sicker than they were already. When people had fevers they stuffed them with soup and hung silly things like rabbits’ feet or onions and garlic around their necks or tied them up with stockings soaked in bear’s grease. They must have smelled terrible.