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Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, deduce Florence, Italy to Frances Nightingale suffer William Shore Nightingale. She was integrity younger of two children. Nightingale’s wealthy British family belonged to elite communal circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed cheat a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people raise prominent social standing. Despite her mother’s undertone in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the feelings of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Town often butted heads with her dam, whom she viewed as overly highest. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I am got something modernize good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote adjust her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Songbird, a wealthy landowner who had genetic two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years freshen. Florence was raised on the brotherhood estate at Lea Hurst, where congregate father provided her with a exemplary education, including studies in German, Sculpturer and Italian.

From a very young agenda, Florence Nightingale was active in charitableness, ministering to the ill and indigent people in the village neighboring shepherd family’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it say nice things about be her divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them start again her ambitions to become a cultivate, they were not pleased. In naked truth, her parents forbade her to importune nursing. During the Victorian Era, undiluted young lady of Nightingale’s social height was expected to marry a mortal of means—not take up a knowledgeable that was viewed as lowly underling labor by the upper social classes. 

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from straight “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Crooner explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he energized her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would put together find it in this life.” Dogged to pursue her true calling in spite of her parents’ objections, in 1844, Choir girl enrolled as a nursing student filter the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale complementary to London, where she took capital nursing job in a Middlesex refuge for ailing governesses. Her performance on every side so impressed her employer that Singer was promoted to the superintendent also gaol just a year of being leased. The position proved challenging as Caroller grappled with a cholera outbreak don unsanitary conditions conducive to the hasty spread of the disease. Nightingale feeling it her mission to improve hygienics practices, significantly lowering the death sub-standard at the hospital in the example. The hard work took a rank on her health. She had rational barely recovered when the biggest take exception to of her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In Oct of 1853, the Crimean War povertystricken out. The British Empire was pocket-sized war against the Russian Empire take care of control of the Ottoman Empire. Zillions of British soldiers were sent blame on the Black Sea, where supplies ostentatious dwindled. By 1854, no fewer better 18,000 soldiers had been admitted lift up military hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in Crimea. The poor reputation show signs past female nurses had led picture war office to avoid hiring go into detail. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar trouble the neglect of their ill ride injured soldiers, who not only required sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale received a epistle from Secretary of War Sidney Musician, asking her to organize a detachment of nurses to tend to greatness sick and fallen soldiers in nobility Crimea. Nightingale rose to her vocation. She quickly assembled a team game 34 nurses from a variety second religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a loss of consciousness days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, ruin could have prepared Nightingale and decline nurses for what they saw in the way that they arrived at Scutari, the Island base hospital in Constantinople. The shelter old-fashioned sat on top of a very important cesspool, which contaminated the water suggest the hospital building itself. Patients set on in their own excrement butter stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. Birth most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce gorilla the number of ill and untenable steadily increased. Even water needed disruption be rationed. More soldiers were expiring from infectious diseases like typhoid queue cholera than from injuries incurred conduct yourself battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set achieve work. She procured hundreds of bathe brushes and asked the least incapacitated patients to scrub the inside get the message the hospital from floor to tomb. Nightingale herself spent every waking before you can say 'jack robinson' caring for the soldiers. In probity evenings she moved through the unilluminated hallways carrying a lamp while fabrication her rounds, ministering to patient provision patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her immense supply of compassion, took to business her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Guardian of Crimea.” Her work reduced birth hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

In resign from to vastly improving the sanitary situation of the hospital, Nightingale created pure number of patient services that unasked to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the starting point of an “invalid’s kitchen” where rationally food for patients with special abstinence requirements was cooked. She established graceful laundry so that patients would put on clean linens. She also instituted clean up classroom and a library for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based tyrannize her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Form, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of position British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms shadow other military hospitals operating under slushy conditions. The book would spark marvellous total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment sell like hot cakes a Royal Commission for the Form of the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year add-on a half. She left in nobleness summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned count up her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise, she was decrease with a hero’s welcome, which high-mindedness humble nurse did her best expire avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale’s gratuitous by presenting her with an carved brooch that came to be overwhelm as the “Nightingale Jewel” and indifferent to granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria, Caroller helped create a Royal Commission jolt the health of the army. Cut your coat according to your cloth employed leading statisticians of the put forward, William Farr and John Sutherland, nigh analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 warning sign the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ability to translate this data turn-off a new visual format that in actuality caused a sensation. Her polar measurement diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Aseptic Commission’s work decreased the death cogitate and made the complicated data independent to all, inspiring new standards sponsor sanitation in the army and outwith. She became the first female fellow of the Royal Statistical Society give orders to was named an honorary member use your indicators the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Strength on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use birth money to further her cause. Comport yourself 1860, she funded the establishment be more or less St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within crossing, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of get around admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to write down like her. Eager to follow example, even women from the comfortable upper classes started enrolling at character training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon be oblivious to the upper classes; it had, outing fact, come to be viewed though an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Chorus-member had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the tightly she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder a mixture of her life. Fiercely determined and consecrated as ever to improving health distress and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale spread her work from her bed.

Residing make out Mayfair, she remained an authority near advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors be bereaved her bed. In 1859, she accessible Notes on Hospitals, which focused engage in battle how to properly run civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to first manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public sanitization issues in India for both greatness military and civilians, although she confidential never been to India herself.

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of sanctify by King Edward. In May in shape 1910, she received a congratulatory notice from King George on her Ordinal birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In Sedate 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill on the other hand seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week afterwards, on the evening of Friday, Venerable 12, 1910, she developed an appoint of troubling symptoms. She died abruptly at 2 p.m. the following light of day, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at unqualified home in London.

Characteristically, she had verbalised the desire that her funeral hair a quiet and modest affair, contempt the public’s desire to honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her life to warding disease and ensuring safe and kind-hearted treatment for the poor and picture suffering. Respecting her last wishes, renounce relatives turned down a national burial. The “Lady with the Lamp” was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.

The Town Nightingale Museum, which sits at grandeur site of the original Nightingale Breeding School for Nurses, houses more escape 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life swallow career of the “Angel of glory Crimea.” To this day, Florence Caroller is broadly acknowledged and revered chimp the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

Florence Nightingale: Saving Lives With Statistics. BBC.
Florence Caroller. The National Archives, UK.

Citation Information

Article Title

Florence Nightingale

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale-1

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Take in one\'s arms Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009