513 



XIKOX. 



NILSSON, SVEN. 



511, 



general hospital, a lunatic asylum, an asylum for orphans, and an 

 infant school. He too felt the deficiency which afterwards impressed 

 Miss Nightingale, the want of skilful nurses; and to remedy this evil, 

 new departments were formed for the proper training of hospital 

 nurses, of teachers to instruct nurses, and of deaconesses, or out-door 

 nurses. Indeed the whole foundation assumed the character of a 

 training school. It is however the hospital above all, opened in 1836, 

 which distinguishes this institution. In little more than twenty years, 

 this establishment, begun with only one patient and one nurse, has so 

 far increased, that it contained in 1355 no less than 190 sisters, 97 of 

 whom having become efficient, after a full course of training, were 

 distributed over Germany, England, Turkey, Greece, and the United 

 States. 



In the year 1849 Miss Florence Nightingale resolved to enter the 

 Kaiserswerth institution as one of the voluntary nurses. Accordingly 

 she placed herself under the guidance of Pastor Fliedner, went through 

 the regular course of training, and surrounded by skilful sisters, whom 

 she has since described, acquired that aptitude in nursing and surgical 

 dressing, which has since been practised on a far more extensive field. 

 She spent upwards of six months in the hospital of Kaiserswerth ; 

 witnessing the devotion of Protestant German ladies when risking 

 their lives in the infected wards. She saw more than one of them die. 

 It was there she acquired that absence of all dread of cholera cases, 

 which made the sick soldiers at Scutari look upon her with admiration. 

 On leaving Kaiserswerth in 1850, she visited a number of other 

 hospitals and asylums for the poor in Germany, France, and Italy, 

 hut more particularly those institutions formed on the model of 

 Pastor Fliedner's, for the training of Protestant nurses and teachers. 

 Among the many sisters of charity she met with in her progress was a 

 German lady, the Baroness Rantzau, directress of a royal benevolent 

 institution at Berlin, patronised by the Queen of Prussia. Like herself, 

 the baroness had adopted the vocation of voluntary nurse, and had 

 qualified at Kaiserswerth. 



After her return to England, Miss Nightingale remained some 

 months at Lea Hunt, to recruit her health. Her next service was the 

 direction of the Sanatorium for Invalid Ladies in Upper Harley-street, 

 London, where she remained from August 1853 to October 1854, 

 wlicn the progress of the war, and the distress of the British army, 

 had roused the sympathy of the nation. The question having been 

 strongly urged, with a pointed reference to the assistance rendered by 

 the Sisters of Charity in the French camp, " Are there no women iu 

 Protestant England to go forth?" Mr. Sidney Herbert, secretary at 

 war, determined to send out to the East a staff of voluntary nurses; 

 and it was in consequence of his urgent request that Miss Nightingale, 

 who endeavoured to shun notice and fame, was induced to take upon 

 herself the onerous duty of its superintendence. Having reached 

 Constantinople a day or two before the battle of Inkerrnann, Novem- 

 ber 5th, 1854, accompanied by her friends and coadjutors, Mr. and 

 Mrs. Bracebridge, and forty-two competent nurses, some of them ladies 

 of rank and fortune, she took up her quarters in the great barrack 

 hospital at Scutari. The battle of Inkermann sent down to that 

 hospital, in a single day, upwards of 600 wounded soldiers ; and so 

 great was the rapidity with which sickness spread through the camp, 

 that the number of patients at Scutari rose in two months, from 

 September 30th to November 30th, from 500 to 3000, and on the 

 10th of January 1855 nearly 10,000 sick men were scattered over the 

 various hospitals on the Bosporus. Miss Nightingale remained nearly 

 two years in the East. It is needless to speak of the services she and 

 other English ladies rendered there ; for their value is universally 

 acknowledged. Her devoted assiduity was only interrupted by an 

 attack of hospital fever, in May 1855. Immediately on her recovery 

 she resumed her good work, nor did she relinquish it, until nearly the 

 last of the great army had been re-embarked. Then she came back, 

 and reached her father's seat at Lea Hurst, on the 8th of September 

 1856. Her services have been warmly, ungrudgingly, and gratefully 

 recognised from the Queen down to the peasant, with a unanimity 

 only accorded to such rare, unostentatious, and truly admirable 

 conduct. A subscription to found an institution for the training of 

 nurses, under the direction of Miss Nightingale, has been raised by the 

 country as the most appropriate testimonial of her services ; it exceeds 

 40.000/. (February 1857). 



A pamphlet written by Miss Nightingale, and published in 1850 for 

 the benefit of the establishment for invalid ladies in Upper Harley- 

 street, is entitled ' The Institution at Kaiserswerth on the Khine, for 

 the Practical Training of Deaconesses, under the direction of the Kev. 

 Pastor Fliedner.' 



(Miss Nightingale, Kaitertwerth; Mrs. Jameson, Sitlen of Charily; 

 Russell, Ltttert on the War ; Bracebridge, Addreu to the Meeting at 

 Alheritone, Ac.) 



NIKON, a celebrated personage in the annals of Russia, and the 

 sixth patriarch in the Russian church, was bora in May 1605, in a 

 village near Nischnei Novgorod, where his father was a husbandman. 

 A natural inclination for study led him to become the pupil of a monk 

 in the convent of St. Makarius. The taste which he there acquired 

 for monastic life and discipline was so strong, that although he married, 

 in compliance with the pressing instances of his family, he separated 

 from bin wife after ten years' union, and prevailed upon her to enter 

 the convent of St. Alexis at Moscow, while he him.- elf retired to n 



moo. DIV. VOL. iv. 



small island in the White Sea, not far from Solowetz, where there was 

 a brotherhood of hermits living in detached cells. The desolation of 

 the place and the severity of the discipline served rather to increase 

 than to abate the ardour of the new recluse ; but the zeal of the 

 brethren led to dissensions that terminated in hia expulsion, or at 

 least his flight. 



Being desirous of replacing their wooden church by a stone edifice, 

 Nikon, and Elizar, the founder and head of the community, proceeded 

 to Moscow, where they collected contributions for the purpose ; but 

 on their return, Elizar took the money into his own keeping, and 

 manifested no intention of applying it to the intended purpose. This 

 led to remonstrances and altercations ; and to such persecution on the 

 part of Elizar, that Nikon pushed oif from the island in a small boat ; 

 and after incurring great danger, was driven to the island Kj, at the 

 mouth of the Onega, where he set up a wooden cross. At the same 

 time he made a vow to erect a monastery on that spot, in fulfilment 

 of which may now be seen the magnificent cloister of the Holy Cross. 

 Associating himself with a community called the Koscheoser hermit', 

 he so distinguished himself by his superior sanctity and severity of 

 life, that on the death of their abbot, or principal, he was elected in 

 hia place, in 1645. Being compelled three years afterwards to take a 

 journey to Moscow, to arrange some affairs of their community, he 

 there became known to the Czar Alexis Mikailovich, who was so struck 

 with bis eloquence and understanding, that he caused him to be ap- 

 pointed archimandrit of the Novospasky Convent A new career was 

 thus suddenly opened to him : his influence with the sovereign 

 increased daily, and he employed it in behalf of the distressed. On 

 being appointed metropolitan of Novgorod, in 1648, he attached the 

 people of that city to him no less strongly : his eloquence drew crowds 

 to hear his discourses in the cathedral, and his bounty maintained 

 numbers during a severe famine. Besides this ho appeased a violent 

 popular insurrection at Novgorod iu 1650, at very imminent peril to 

 his own person. In the meanwhile ha continued in high favour with 

 the Czar, who frequently corresponded with him, and who, on the 

 death of the patriarch Joseph, in 1652, appointed him his successor. 

 It was about this time that he commenced his reforms ia the books, 

 as he had previously done in the liturgy, of the church ; and held 

 several councils relative to the translations of the Scriptures. But herein 

 his zeal led to his disgrace : his reforms were regarded as dangerous 

 innovations ; and notwithstanding the Cznr had shown such friendly 

 confidence in him as to place his own family under his care during the 

 pestilence at Moscow in 1653-54, and had attended at the consecration 

 of the Voskresensky monastery (erected by Nikon) in lOi", the 

 patriarch's enemies contrived to prejudice him iu the good opinion of 

 his sovereign, and in 1658 he retired to the monastery just mentioned, 

 situated about forty versts from the capital, whence he refused to 

 return. The feeling against him increased, till at length, in 1667, a 

 council was held at Moscow, at which the Czar himself presided, and 

 which was attended by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, 

 those of Constantinople and Jerusalem having excused themselves. 

 The result was that Nikon was deposed from his diguity, and was 

 banished to the Bieloozersky monastery, with the rank of a simple 

 monk. There he remained until after the death of Alexis, whose 

 successor, Pheodor Alexievich, granted him permission to return to 

 the Voskresensky monastery; but he died on the journey thither, at 

 Yaroslav, August 17th, 1681, at the age of seventy-five. 



Nikon compiled a collection of ancient Russian chronicles to the 

 year 1630, which were printed by the Academy of Sciences of St. 

 Petersburg, in 8 vols. 4to, 1767-92. He also wrote several dogmatical 

 and theological pieces, which were printed in his lifetime. 



NILEUS, a surgeon of the Alexandrian school, celebrated for the 

 invention of a machine called the 'plinthium,' which was employed 

 with success in reducing luxations of the femur. (Cels., ' De Mod.,' 

 lib. viii., cap. 20; Oribas, ' De Machinam,' cap. 8, p. 617.) Some of his 

 medicines are quoted by Galen, Aetius, Celsus, Paulus yEgineta, 

 Caelius Aurelianus, and Oribasius. The exact time when he lived is 

 not known ; but as ho is mentioned by Celsus, we may perhaps safely 

 place him a little before the beginning of the Christian era. 



* NILSSON, SVEN, professor of natural history iu the University 

 of Lund, and the most distinguished living zoologist in Sweden, was 

 born in 1787. He studied at Lund, and iu 1812 was appointed a 

 teacher of natural history in connection with that university. In 1818 

 he took his degree of M.D., and in 1821 was appointed a titular 

 professor. In 1828 he was appointed superintendent of the natural 

 history collections of the Academy of Sciences. In 1832 he became 

 ordinary professor of natural history in the University of Lund. He 

 was also at this time, in accordance with the custom iu Denmark ami 

 Sweden, where men of science arc advanced to positions iu the Church, 

 made a prebend. In 1836 he visited England and France, and at this 

 time was deeply interested in the studies of archaeology. His works 

 on natural history have been very numerous, and he has especially 

 devoted himself to the illustration of Scandinavian zoology. One of 

 bis earliest and most important works was his ' Scandinavian Fauna,' 

 the first volume of which was published in 1820 and the third in 

 1828. His other works have been mostly expansions of this, and he 

 tias at various times published papers on the comparative anatomy, 

 mbits, and structure of Scandinavian animals. He has also devoted 

 much attention to the subject of archaeology, and has published a 



2 L 



