To see photographs taken during the Crimean War is to catch a glimpse of a world on the cusp of military modernity. Not that this is immediately obvious, however. The most famous image caught by pioneering British war photographer Roger Fenton, titled Valley of the Shadow of Death, is of nothing more than a stark landscape pebbled with cannonballs. And his pictures of the soldiers show men in uniforms often not so different from the Napoleonic Wars era.
Yet to understand how one of the war's undeniably most famous figures, Florence Nightingale, had such an enduring influence on the history of medicine both in terms of trauma treatment and the wider profession – it is important first to understand that this was a conflict ofexploding shells helped end the era of wooden combat ships; the British built the Grand Crimean Central Railway to bring supplies and men to the front; and messages were sent home via electric telegraph so that news of what was happening could reach London In a matter of days.
