
Florence Nightingale
pioneering nurse
Her name may be synonymous with nursing excellence, but Florence Nightingale almost didn't get to be one. Instead, her wealthy parents wanted her to do the respectable thing...marry a gentleman. Fortunately, Florence held firm to her calling.
Known for her compassionate care of wounded soldiers amidst the brutality of the Crimean War, she improved medicine as a whole. Her detailed analysis of how unsanitary conditions spread disease led to major hospital reforms. An illness contracted during the war took Florence out of the field at age 38. Bedridden, she wrote a definitive textbook + founded a nursing school ~ transforming her profession into something even well-to-do women were proud to do.
founding of modern nursing | compassion + commitment to patient care, best practices, sanitary conditions
faith + humility | "called" to be a nurse ~ "God ... asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation"
skilled statistician | developed an early pie chart diagram ~ 1st female elected to the Royal Statistics Society
prolific writer | Notes on Nursing ~ primer for all trainees
1850 | began her training as a nurse at the Institute of St Vincent de Paul in Alexandria, Egypt
1854 | formed a corps of nurses and went to Turkey to treat soldiers injured in the Crimean War at the request of British war secretary
1860 | founded the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London
from | to
wealthy girl whose parents wanted her to marry well | legendary nursing pioneer, statistician writer, reformer + philanthropist
born on
May 12, 1820
born in
Florence, Italy
birth name
Florence Nightingale
also known as
Lady with the Lamp
the Angel of Crimea
citizen of
The United Kingdom
daughter of
Frances Smith Nightingale
~ abolitionist + affluent socialite ~
William Shore Nightingale
~ wealthy landowner ~
younger sister of
Frances Parthenope ~ also named after city where she was born, near Naples, Italy
grew up on
family estate at Leahurst, Derbyshire, UK
educated at
Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner ~ Kaiserswerth, Germany.
loved studying
math ~ tutored by James Joseph Sylvester who did significant work on matrix theory
married to
her work ~ told suitors marriage would make it difficult to pursue her calling as a nurse
advocate for
healthcare and hospital reform
sanitary conditions and hygiene as disease prevention
the nursing profession ~ made it fashionable for wealthy ladies
in her spare time
wrote | an 800+ page report that led to reform of the British military hospital system ~ also led to worldwide reform
traveled | to India to reform sanitary conditions
died on
August 13, 1910
image credit
Library of Congress | public domain
"I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions, and into actions which bring results."
letter to Mary Clark | 1844
"How very little can be done under the spirit of fear."
The Life of Florence Nightingale, Volume I | may 1846
"God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation."
quoted in The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale | march 1850
"For the sick it is important to have the best."
State of the Hospitals of the British Army in Crimea and Scutari | february 1855
"It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm."
Notes on Hospitals | 1859
"Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the body...I wish a little more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind."
Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not | 1859
"And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without."
Notes on Nursing ~ What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"You want to do the thing that is good, whether it is 'suitable for a woman' or not."
Notes on Nursing ~ What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"God always justifies His ways. While we are thinking, He has been teaching."
Notes on Nursing ~ What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Remember he is face to face with his enemy all the time."
Notes on Nursing: What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"I do not pretend to teach her how, I ask her to teach herself, and for this purpose I venture to give her some hints."
Notes on Nursing ~ What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"Every woman, or at least almost every woman, in England has, at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid, ~ in other words, every woman is a nurse."
Notes on Nursing - What it is, and what it is not | 1860
"Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts."
Una and the Lion | june 1868
for further reading about Florence Nightingale:
curated with care by Kathleen Murray {september 2014}
Florence Nightingale and the Scutari Cross
The Scutari Cross sitting was bequeathed by Florence to St Margaret's, her childhood parish church. The one now on display is a replica. The original, made from spent bullets and shrapnel by a soldier in the Crimea, was stolen in 1991 and has never been recovered. Florence's observations while superintendent of female nurses in the hospital at Scutari helped shape improvements in sanitation and disease prevention.
Sue Hasker | CC-BY-ND 2.0
illustration
Florence was called the "Lady of the Lamp" for her nightly check-ups of the wounded in the hospital in Scutari, in a section of Istanbul now known as Üsküdar. In reality, she carried a paper concertina lamp, not an oil lamp depicted in the picture. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave her the enduring epithet in his poem Santa Filomena: A Lady with a lamp shall stand. In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic Womanhood
Illustrated London News 1855 | Public Domain | http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nightingale-illustrated-london-news-feb-24-1855.jpg
Florence Nightingale's Polar Area Graph
Florence devised her own version of a pie chart to show how soldiers died from July 1854 through December 1855 at in the military hospital in Turkey where she worked during the Crimean War. Each slice shows how many people died from wounds in battle, other causes and disease. As a result authorities learned that more people died from contagious diseases such as cholera, typhus and dysentery than in battle with the Russians.
Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army sent to Queen Victoria in 1858 | Official Website of the British Monarchy | PD-US | http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nightingale-mortality.jpg