Florence Nightingale is known as ‘the founder of modern nursing’ and is famously thought of as ‘The Lady with the Lamp’. She is named after Florence, Italy, her place of birth.
Nightingale was active in helping those less fortunate than herself early in her life, helping those who were ill or poor in the village near her family’s estate. By 16 she knew that nursing was her calling in life. Due to her family’s social standing, she was destined for a life as a rich man’s wife, not as a ‘lowly nurse’. Her parents forbade her from nursing and at 17 a ‘suitable gentleman’ proposed that they marry, she refused and instead enrolled herself to train as a nurse the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserswerth, Germany.
In the 1850’s Nightingale returned to London and her nursing talents were so impressive that she was quickly promoted to Superintendent of a hospital for ‘gentlewomen’ in Harley Street.
In 1853 the Crimean War broke out, the conditions for the injured soldiers were so dreadful and there was a distinct lack of medical supplies as by 1854, around 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals. At that time there were no female nurses, as in they had gained a poor reputation in the past.
Nightingale received a letter from Secretary of War Sidney Herbert after being accused of neglect of the ill and injured soldiers following the Battle of Alma. She was tasked with organising a team of nurses and assembled 34 who she took with her to the Crimea.
The hospital was far worse than could have been imagined, it was above a cesspool which was contaminating the water, the patients led in their own filth and rats and insects swarmed the place. More patients died from infection than battle wounds.
Nightingale went on to set up the standards of nursing that are still in place today, she ensured that the hospital was as clean as it possibly could be and introduced sanitary improvements such as hand washing. At night she patrolled the wards with her lamp, ministering to each patient in turn. She persuaded the British Government to help and a new, prefabricated building was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, built in Britain and shipped over. She was able to improve the supply of beds, blankets and food and the death rate quickly reduced from 42% to 2%.
On her return from the Crimea Nightingale was convinced that stale air, lack of proper food, lack of supplies and overworking of the patients to be the biggest cause of death. A Nightingale Fund of £45,000 was raised in response to her success in the Crimea, she used this to set up the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital. Her book Notes on Nursing (1859) was the cornerstone of the curriculum. Nightingale’s work led to the reputation of Nursing becoming much improved and it was thought of as an honourable vocation. Her school is now named the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and is part of King’s College London.
Nightingale also went on to popularise the use of graphical representations of statistical information, such as pie charts or the Nightingale rose diagram to show information such as patient mortality when presenting research into conditions in hospitals.
Nightingale was a Feminist, something that was necessary given the context of her Victorian upbringing. She helped to abolish prostitution laws that were overly harsh to women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce through her vast contribution to Nursing. She wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth which was privately printed and contained her thoughts including the belief that the over-feminisation of women had forced them into near helplessness. Not long after she wrote this she had left home to train as a nurse, so her writing had obviously helped to spur her on.