Howdy from the other side of the pond!

For the past few days I’ve been in London, visiting an old friend from college. While I was there, I was able to travel back in time and visit some historic landmarks of public health and nursing, which I feel is appropriate as I will enter in the present day of public health when I arrive in Kampala, Uganda for my final master’s practicum.

Of course, my very first stop was to visit the Nightengale museum, a person that I think almost every nurse has a particular reverence for. The museum had been recently updated, and boasted several wonderful artifacts, including her owl! The museum was pretty innovative, and instead of audio headsets, you had stethoscopes and you put the bell of the stethoscope onto the special areas to listen to the audio for that section. I learned a lot about her that I hadn’t known before, as I had just started her Notes on Nursing prior to embarking upon my trip.

As something to listen to during my travels, my mother-in-law had given me the audio book, The Ghost Map, regarding the cholera outbreak in London in the 1840s. A public health mastermind and anesthesiologist John Snow discovered the source of the outbreak at the Broad Street pump, which unfortunately doesn’t exist to this day. In its place is a pub, which has many artifacts on the second floor while you have a few cheap pints. I highly recommend that book, it’s quite a forage into history.

I have some great pictures that I’ll add as soon as I get a strong enough internet connection!