QI: some quite interesting facts about nursing To nurse, a woman has to be lactating; but this can be induced quite quickly by regular suckling (some mothers of adopted children use a breast pump). Babies who have been exposed to the scent of their mother's milk in the first few minutes after birth respond more positively towards it. Newborn babies can acquire preferences for many different smells if they encounter them immediately after birth. In one experiment, researchers introduced newborns to the scent of camomile while they were suckling. A few days later, their attraction to the scent of camomile was just as strong as their attraction to breast milk. Mrs Pack One of the most formidable wet nurses was responsible for saving the life of the heir to the throne - William, Duke of Gloucester (1689-1700), only son of Princess (later Queen) Anne, who had already lost 14 children. William was weak, suffered from convulsions and rejected all attempts to feed him. A call went out and Mrs Pack, a Quaker from Kingston Wick, turned up. She commended herself to the child's father, Prince George of Denmark, on the basis of her "gigantic" breasts. Mrs Pack's milk did the trick and the child soon recovered. As a result, Mrs Pack assumed huge power in the royal household and soon found herself managing the royal nursery. The historian Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy considered her the prototypical English nanny. Mary Seacole The Jamaican-born heroine of the Crimean War was initially rejected by the army as a nurse and travelled to the Crimea at her own expense. She built the British Hotel, just two miles from the front line. This comprised a bar, a hospital and a general store that stocked anything from "a needle to an anchor." It served rice puddings and sponge cakes that reminded the troops of home and, known to all as "Mother Seacole," Mary was a warm, reassuring presence who dressed in startling combinations of yellow, blue and red. This loyalty was repaid when she returned from the war, penniless. Within a few months she had mobilised her friends in the upper echelons of the army and the press to set up the Seacole Fund to save Mary from the threat of bankruptcy. In July 1857, the fund staged a four-day festival featuring more than 1,000 performers. It was a kind of SeacoleAid, attended by a crowd of 40,000 people. Florence Nightingale The other famous nurse of the Crimean conflict is rightly considered the founder of modern nursing practice, although she spent relatively little time actually tending to the sick. She arrived in Scutari in November 1854 with 38 nurses, and she proceeded to reorganise the hospital there from top to bottom. Despite this, death rates soared; they only began to drop when the sewerage system was overhauled and the source of infection removed. In 1858, after the war had ended, Nightingale submitted an 830-page report which showed that soldiers had been three times more likely to die in Scutari than they had been in the basic field hospitals at the front. Edith Cavell In 1932, when girls were asked who they wanted to be when they grew up, the most popular choice was wartime nurse Edith Cavell (1865-1915). Second was Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, and third was Joan of Arc. Cavell was a nurse during the First World War, and helped any soldier in need, irrespective of their nationality. There was global outrage when she was court-martialled and shot at dawn on October 12 1915, for helping Allied soldiers to escape from German-occupied Belgium. She is single-handedly responsible for establishing the name "Edith" in France - Edith Piaf was named after her. The Second Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson (Faber & Faber, RRP £8.99) is available from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1515) Next week: QI walks the plank