Who she??

Have you heard of Mary Seacole?  If not, I'm not surprised, but you might find that the name becomes more familiar over the next few weeks, because she is to have a statue of herself unveiled at St Thomas' Hospital in London and not everybody is happy about it.  So, what's the story?  She was a Jamaican "nurse" during the Crimean War - I have put the word nurse in inverted commas because there is much dispute as to how much nursing she actually did and how effectual it was. What she did do was to set up a small hotel behind the lines and provide room and board for sick and wounded soldiers.  She had no formal medical training and what nursing she did was based on the folk medicine of her Caribbean childhood.  There is little doubt that she was very popular among the soldiers, so why the fuss about the statue?  Well, it's not so much about the statue as about where it is to be erected.  St Thomas' Hospital is closely associated with Florence Nightingale and the decision to site the statue there has been seen by some as a suggestion that the two women were equally important in the history of nursing whereas to many, all that Mary Seacole did was to "sell wine and sandwiches".