Florence Nightingale

At the great age of ninety years Florence Nightingale, the reformer of military brutalities, known in her day as army hospitals and army medicine, the forerunner and prophetess of the Red Cross, the creator of the modern profession of skilled nursing; the foremost sanitarian of her day and, with Pasteur, the incomparable teacher of health preservation and disease prevention - Florence Nightingale, the Lady with a Lamp, has gone quietly to rest. Born in 1820, she was thirty-four years old when...See more

At the great age of ninety years Florence Nightingale, the reformer of military brutalities, known in her day as army hospitals and army medicine, the forerunner and prophetess of the Red Cross, the creator of the modern profession of skilled nursing; the foremost sanitarian of her day and, with Pasteur, the incomparable teacher of health preservation and disease prevention - Florence Nightingale, the Lady with a Lamp, has gone quietly to rest. Born in 1820, she was thirty-four years old when she took charge of the expedition of nurses to the Crimea, which brought her into the white light of the world's attention. Already, quietly and unostentatiously, she had spent some ten years in the most searching and laborious study of hospital administration, building, and sanitation, nursing, hygiene, and principles of prevention. Before that she had received a liberal education of unusual range and thoroughness. After the Crimean war, broken in health, she became more and more inevitably secluded in the quiet rooms of a chronic invalid, but from these restricted quarters her remarkable intellect swept the entire globe and, for almost fifty years longer, she remained the magnetic center of attraction and the source of counsel and inspiration for all persons and groups of persons in diverse lands who carried the banner of service to the sick whether in hospitals, homes, or barracks. It is probably not too much to say that, during all this long period, not a really important piece of pioneer work in these directions was undertaken or a weighty problem encountered in either hemisphere that was not laid before her for advice, or at least that she might know of it. To future ages, doubtless, her remarkable teachings on prevention will seem the most brilliant proofs of her really great, original genius. From the first she dwelt more upon health than upon sickness. "Health nursing" is her expression. "Since God did not mean mothers to be always accompanied by doctors," she wrote, "there is a want older still and larger still.... This is the art of health, which...every woman ought practically to learn. Call it health nursing.... Upon woman-kind the national health, as far as the household goes, depends." Miss Nightingale wrote much and her works upon nursing and hospitals, army reorganization and medical relief are classics. She never wrote even the smallest autobiography, but it is much to be hoped that the remaining members of her family will publish a complete history of her remarkable life. See less