The army base hospital at Scutari in Constantinople was unclean, poorly supplied with bandages and soap and the patients did not have proper food or medicine.įlorence Nightingale found that wounded and dying men were sleeping in overcrowded, dirty rooms often without blankets. Britain was at war with Russia in a conflict called the Crimean War (1854-1856). On the 4 November 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Turkey with a group of 38 nurses from England.