Florence Nightingale
1820-1910
English Nurse
Driven by a message from God to nurse the sick, Florence Nightingale became known as the mother of the modern nursing profession. She single-handedly changed the way English hospitals functioned and the way nurses worked within them. Her reforms spread throughout the world.
Nightingale was born to aristocratic parents in May 1820, in Florence, Italy. Her parents chose to name her after the city of her birth. Once she was one year old, Nightingale's parents decided to return to their native England.
Typical of wealthy English families, the Nightingales had more than one estate. They summered at Lea Hurst, a relatively small house with 15 bedrooms, and lived the rest of the year at Embley Park, their larger home. They also spent each spring and fall visiting London. The Nightingales were extremely social, and Florence and her older sister Parthenope grew up within a flurry of balls, banquets, and social gatherings.
When Nightingale was 24, she claimed to receive a clear message that she was to nurse the sick in service to God. In 1844, however, nursing was not an honorable profession. Hospitals were scenes of incredible filth and associated with despicable people. Her parents forbid her to follow her calling and restricted her actions. She lived the next several years in misery. Late at night she would read articles she had secretly received. From these she became an expert on hospital conditions and reform. She took advantage of rare opportunities to nurse ailing relatives and neighbors. These were her only fleeting moments of happiness and fulfillment.
Relatives and friends finally helped Nightingale convince her family that she should be allowed to become supervisor of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. Over strenuous objections, the Nightingale's permitted her to take the position. At the age of 32, Nightingale was finally allowed to answer God's call.
Within a few months details of Nightingale's reputation had spread to the British government. After England and France declared war on Russia, beginning the Crimean War, Nightingale was asked to travel to Turkey to lead a group of nurses in the care of battle-injured soldiers. The conditions were horrible. Men screamed in agony and were left to suffer, disease raged in every corridor, and soldiers lived in their own filth. Although she encountered such severe conditions, within a few months she had largely sanitized the hospitals, found clean bedding and clothing for the men, and greatly increased the comfort of all involved. Those around her called her gift "Nightingale power." Soldiers called her "the lady with the lamp" because late at night she wandered the halls while carrying a lamp, making sure the men were quiet and able to rest.
Nightingale returned to England a hero, having revolutionized nursing. In the midst of this triumph, Nightingale's health collapsed. She proceeded to write letters and reports from her bed and was an invalid much of the rest of her life. It was later thought that she suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, though at the time it was considered to be exhaustion from the war, and perhaps overexposure to disease. In spite of her illness, she continued to work for more extensive sanitation and reform in hospitals.
For the last 14 years of her life Nightingale did not leave her bedroom. When she was 87 she received the Order of Merit from King Edward VII. It was the first time the award had ever been given to a woman. Three years later, at age 90, she died, completely blind and no longer lucid. She willed her body to science and requested that only a simple cross mark her grave.
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