How World War I Nurses Used Scent to Comfort the Wounded

If you walked into a World War I hospital ward, you would have entered a world of extremes: astonishing courage and exhaustion, tenderness and trauma, relentless noise and long, quiet hours that dragged.

And you would have encountered something modern healthcare workers instantly recognize as part of the job but rarely talk about in polished histories: the sensory weight of care.

WWI nurses wrote about amputations, shock, gas injuries, influenza and infections that turned routine dressing changes into ordeals of endurance. A nursing history exhibit from the University of Delaware notes that emergencies like gas gangrene were common, and nurse writings increasingly revealed strain, isolation, and helplessness as the war went on.

Against that backdrop, one small, unexpected detail shows up in wartime nursing accounts again and again: lavender. Not as a miracle drug, but as a practical, human comfort.

The “lavender bag” a dying soldier asked for

In 1917, British nurse Olive Dent published A V.A.D. in France, describing everyday life caring for wounded soldiers. In one of the most affecting passages, she writes about a patient suffering from gas gangrene—a rapidly destructive infection—calling out repeatedly for a lavender bag because, as he put it, his wound “smell[ed] so.”

Dent’s response was immediate and deeply nurse-like: she gathered lavender bags into muslin, tucked them under his pillow, and hung additional sachets around him wherever she could. She then adds something that makes the moment bigger than a single bedside scene: there were “dozens” of other wounded men who appreciated lavender bags too. Especially those who felt nauseated by the smell of their wounds during dressing changes.

It’s hard to read that without recognizing a truth many nurses still carry: sometimes comfort is not about curing. Sometimes comfort is about helping someone endure what must be endured, with as much dignity as possible.

Lavender, stitched at home and carried to the front

Dent’s lavender bags didn’t appear out of nowhere. They were part of a broader home-front pattern: families, volunteers, and organizations sending small “comfort” items into hospitals. Simple objects that brought cleanliness, familiarity, and care into places defined by disruption.

Historian Claire L. Clark describes these scented gifts as “smellies”: homemade and commercial items that invoked familiar scents, including lavender and verbena bags and products like lavender water. These items were often framed as ways of helping the injured at the front, and wounded soldiers reportedly appreciated them as “alleged fumigants and sources of comfort.”

Even nurses’ own diaries record these packages arriving. In Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914–1915, the author notes receiving “awfully nice lavender bags” sent by the Victoria League, an example of how widely recognized these items were as wartime hospital comforts.

Dent even describes a “time-saving” way lavender was shipped: bunches of sprigs with blooms covered in muslin and tied with ribbon. Easy to handle, easy to place near the bedside, and easy to distribute.

Was lavender used as medicine or something else?

Here’s where it helps to be historically precise.

In these nursing accounts, lavender isn’t described as a primary wound antiseptic or a standardized medical treatment. Instead, it shows up as what we might now call supportive care, aimed at the lived experience of illness and injury:

• easing nausea during dressings,
• softening the harshness of the ward’s smells,
• providing psychological comfort through a familiar scent,
• and quietly signaling, “Someone thought of you.”

At the same time, the wartime era did include a flourishing market in “sick-room” scents. Clark documents that some companies promoted “Real Old English Lavender Water” and similar products as refreshing gifts to the wounded and others, and that ad copy framed perfume as suitable for sick rooms (with claims about soothing headaches and fatigued nerves).

So lavender existed in two overlapping worlds: nursing improvisation at the bedside, and a commercial ecosystem that sold scent as part of wartime wellbeing.

Why this matters to nurses now

The power of this story isn’t that WWI nurses “discovered” lavender.

The power is that, in the middle of industrial-scale trauma, nurses still made space for something deeply human: comfort that acknowledged the whole person, not just the wound.

Modern hospitals and modern nurses also navigate the sensory and emotional intensity of care delivery. In that context, it’s not surprising that lavender continues to appear in hospital wellbeing culture, including in staff-support models such as Code Lavender.

A Code Lavender program is commonly described as a rapid response designed to support staff (and sometimes patients and families) when a stressful event occurs. Offering presence, comforting resources, and connection to additional support.

Cleveland Clinic’s published materials describe Code Lavender as a crisis intervention tool that staff, patients, family members, or volunteers can call after stressful events, with responders arriving within a defined timeframe.

In other words: Code Lavender is one modern way healthcare systems say out loud what nurses have always known: this work is emotionally expensive, and support must be real, immediate, and human.

A small lavender farm’s modern connection to an old nursing practice

At Lavender Creek Co., we’re a lavender farm in California’s Monterey County, and our work today is centered on sharing lavender as our platform for calm, comfort, and care.

When we partner with hospital employee wellness and care teams, our goal is to contribute a small, practical piece of comfort. Something easy to offer in a hard moment, much like the lavender sachets that arrived in WWI wards.

If your hospital is building or expanding Code Lavender resources, caregiver support programs, or staff wellbeing initiatives, we’d love to be a small part of that ecosystem.

A century ago, nurses on the Western Front were still doing what nurses do now. Finding ways, sometimes with nothing more than a hand-sewn bag of lavender, to make unbearable moments a little more bearable.

References and suggested further reading

Primary and near-primary historical sources used above:

• Olive Dent, A V.A.D. in France (1917) — includes a detailed bedside account of lavender bags used to reduce the distress caused by foul-smelling wounds during dressing changes.
• Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914–1915 — records receipt of “lavender bags” sent to support wartime nursing life.
• Winifred M. Lee, letter “Lavender for Hospitals,” The Hospital and Health Review (Aug 1923) — recalls collecting lavender for the sick and wounded during the war and proposes sending lavender bags to hospitals afterward.
• Claire L. Clark, “Lavender for Lads”: documents lavender/verbena “smellies,” contextualizes purpose (comfort/odor mitigation), and notes lavender water and other products framed as sick-room gifts.

Contextual sources for nurses and care settings:

• University of Delaware exhibit “The Nurses of World War I” (American Battlefield Nurses): overview of conditions and common emergencies (including gas gangrene).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica on Dakin’s solution: confirms Dakin’s solution as a WWI antiseptic for infected wounds (helpful for contrasting documented antisepsis with lavender’s primarily comfort-focused role in nursing accounts).
• British Red Cross VAD history page: background on who VAD volunteers were and how wartime volunteer systems supported hospitals and supplies.

Modern Code Lavender references:

• Heart of Safety Coalition / Stryker Code Lavender toolkit: defines Code Lavender as a formalized rapid response for emotional distress and outlines program purpose.
• Cleveland Clinic / Nursing2018 “Code Lavender: A tool for staff support”: describes Code Lavender as a crisis intervention tool and outlines who can call it and response expectations.