Florence Nightingale
Revered as the ‘Lady of the Lamp’, Florence Nightingale is perhaps best remembered for pioneering the concept of modern nursing, but she was also an early social reformer and feminist, and towards the end of her life, a powerful symbol of the reform and feminist movements.
Uniquely among socially active women of the age, Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 into an extremely wealthy, upper-class English family, and she was named after the Italian city in Tuscany where she was born. On all sides of her extended family were liberal social reformers, and she was gifted with the dual advantages of significant social gravity and a wide-ranging education. Her philanthropic tendencies were evident from a young age, and to the consternation of her parents, she chose a career in nursing. This was then regarded as a vocation rather than a profession, and seen among the upper-classes to be menial. Despite their objections, however, in 1844, she enrolled as a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital in Kaiserwerth, Germany.
Back in London in the 1850s, she was thrown into the deep end as a cholera outbreak wracked the British capital, and immediately it became clear to her that conditions of hygiene were the main contributor to the spread of the disease. She made it her mission to improve these conditions, which quickly proved successful. Then, in October 1853, the Crimean War broke out, and, thanks to her social position, she was commissioned by the Secretary of War to organize a nursing corps to tend to the sick and fallen soldiers.
Within a few days she had assembled a team of thirty-four nurses from a variety of religious orders, and with these she sailed for the Crimea. What she encountered was almost unimaginable conditions, with an nearly complete abandonment of the sick and dying. Recognizing again that hygiene was the key, she set to work. Her regular visits to the wards at night, lamp in hand, gave her the immortal epithet ‘The Lady of the Lamp’.
By these means, Florence Nightingale reduced the death toll of wounded soldiers by two-thirds. What she learned by this experience, and the fame that she acquired as a consequence, helped her establish the first dedicated school for nurses at London’s famous St Thomas’ hospital – the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.
In this regard Florence Nightingale established the basis of modern nursing, but also she elevated the reputation of the profession, attracting to its ranks women of both breeding and wealth.
Beyond that, Florence Nightingale leveraged her fame and respectability to a great many social causes, from abolition to women’s rights, but perhaps mostly to the modernization and professionalism of the nursing vocation.