To get to Asia the Monkey simply hopped a ferry across the Bosphorus to the port of Üsküdar. There he wandered the back streets, eventually arriving at the Selimiye Barracks pictured above. Why did the Monkey stop for a photo in front of this Turkish military installation? It was here that during the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856 a British nurse named Florence Nightingale made a name for herself and the nursing profession. While the combined French, British, and Turkish forces thwarted Russian expansionism, Nightingale was busy fighting disease and sexism. The male doctors of the military hospital did not take kindly to the presence of Nightingale and her 38 female nurses, until the hospital was swamped by casualties from battle. At that point, Nightingale and her nurses were suddenly very much in demand, and she began speaking out against the appalling conditions in the British military hospitals.
In short order, Florence Nightingale revolutionized the nursing profession. She collected statistics on the soldiers' wounds and demonstrated that by improving sanitary conditions in the wards, the death rate would drop (in fact, when she began only one of every six soldiers died from his war wounds—most others succumbed to cholera, dysentery, and other infections that spring from squalor). Nightingale also wrote extensively on nursing, and after the war when she returned to Britain she campaigned for continued modernization of the healthcare system and helped nursing acquire the professional respect it deserved. Many of the concepts and ideas she developed are still in use today. In fact, some people even credit Nightingale with inventing the pie chart! The Monkey salutes Florence and her 38 nurses for their important work and the advances they made in these very barracks.
Near the Selimiye Barracks in the Scutari neighborhood of Asian Istanbul, the Monkey came across a busy little open air market. He couldn't resist a photograph by these two women catching their breath before returning to the hustle of the marketplace.
The Monkey didn't really get any fantastic photos on his Asian excursion, but he has every intention to return and push much further into Anatolia.
DUR MAJMUN! Stop Monkey! Sadly, this is where the Monkey's travels in Turkey had to, um, dur.
That's all the photos the Monkey has from Turkey for now—and look at all those Turkish lira he didn't spend! He'll have to go back soon.
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