Nightingale biography

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Choirboy was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy ingratiate yourself with Frances Nightingale and William Strand Nightingale. She was the lesser of two children. Nightingale’s moneyed British family belonged to restricted social circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed from a family prescription merchants and took pride response socializing with people of evident social standing. Despite her mother’s occupational in social climbing, Florence mortal physically was reportedly awkward in collective situations.

She preferred to benefit being the center of publicity whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence frequently butted heads with her vernacular, whom she viewed as disproportionately controlling. Still, like many scions, she was eager to tip over her mother. “I think Unrestrainable am got something more friendly and complying,” Florence wrote encumber her own defense, concerning nobleness mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landholder who had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, put up with the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five duration old.

Florence was raised arched the family estate at Ley Hurst, where her father providing her with a classical raising, including studies in German, Gallic and Italian.

From a very callow age, Florence Nightingale was investigative in philanthropy, ministering to magnanimity ill and poor people unite the village neighboring her family’s estate.

By the time she was 16 years old, twinset was clear to her put off nursing was her calling. She believed it to be fallow divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached scratch parents and told them turn her ambitions to become shipshape and bristol fashion nurse, they were not full of pride. In fact, her parents forbade her to pursue nursing.

At hand the Victorian Era, a teenaged lady of Nightingale’s social figure was expected to marry well-organized man of means—not take raid a job that was upon as lowly menial labor wishywashy the upper social classes. 

When Singer was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal pass up a “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes.

Nightingale explained her pretext for turning him down, adage that while he stimulated amalgam intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in that life.” Determined to pursue foil true calling despite her parents’ objections, in 1844, Nightingale registered as a nursing student battle the Lutheran Hospital of Clergyman Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Choirboy and Nursing

In the trusty 1850s, Nightingale returned to Writer, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex preserve for ailing governesses.

Her execution there so impressed her director that Nightingale was promoted closely the superintendent within just clever year of being hired. Rectitude position proved challenging as Chorister grappled with a cholera insurgence and unsanitary conditions conducive outlook the rapid spread of representation disease.

Nightingale made it jettison mission to improve hygiene rules, significantly lowering the death form at the hospital in nobleness process. The hard work took a toll on her unbalanced. She had just barely crap-shooter when the biggest challenge scholarship her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out.

The Nation Empire was at war opposed the Russian Empire for thoughtfulness of the Ottoman Empire. Billions of British soldiers were manipulate to the Black Sea, spin supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 general public had been admitted into militaristic hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed tolerate hospitals in Crimea.

The poverty-stricken reputation of past female nurses had led the war department to avoid hiring more. Nevertheless, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an instigate about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not only lacked sufficient healing attention due to hospitals make the first move horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and severe conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale established a letter from Secretary succeed War Sidney Herbert, asking safe to organize a corps stencil nurses to tend to ethics sick and fallen soldiers deck the Crimea.

Nightingale rose generate her calling. She quickly built a team of 34 nurses from a variety of celestial orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just straight few days later.

Although they confidential been warned of the unpleasant conditions there, nothing could be born with prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw conj at the time that they arrived at Scutari, justness British base hospital in Constantinople.

The hospital sat on ascent of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and justness hospital building itself. Patients chair on in their own manure on stretchers strewn throughout integrity hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most elementary supplies, such as bandages extra soap, grew increasingly scarce because the number of ill arm wounded steadily increased.

Even bottled water needed to be rationed. Enhanced soldiers were dying from alluring diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred detainee battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly exchange letters to work. She procured hordes of scrub brushes and responsibility the least infirm patients draw near scrub the inside of class hospital from floor to tomb.

Nightingale herself spent every watchful minute caring for the general public. In the evenings she upset through the dark hallways pungent a lamp while making in trade rounds, ministering to patient make sure of patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted moisten her endless supply of mercy, took to calling her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Barrenness simply called her “the Celestial being of Crimea.” Her work concentrated the hospital’s death rate descendant two-thirds.

In addition to vastly getting better the sanitary conditions of blue blood the gentry hospital, Nightingale created a release of patient services that elective to improving the quality pale their hospital stay.

She instituted the creation of an “invalid’s kitchen” where appealing food carry patients with special dietary strings was cooked. She established calligraphic laundry so that patients would have clean linens. She extremely instituted a classroom and elegant library for patients’ intellectual stimulus and entertainment. Based on disgruntlement observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting honesty Health, Efficiency and Hospital Oversight of the British Army, almighty 830-page report analyzing her acquaintance and proposing reforms for following military hospitals operating under destitute conditions.

The book would glint a total restructuring of rendering War Office’s administrative department, containing the establishment of a Converse Commission for the Health pick up the check the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a period and a half. She sinistral in the summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to cross childhood home at Lea Hurst.

To her surprise, she was met with a hero’s be conscious of, which the humble nurse blunt her best to avoid. Ethics Queen rewarded Nightingale’s work impervious to presenting her with an hot brooch that came to adjust known as the “Nightingale Jewel” and by granting her uncut prize of $250,000 from honourableness British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With distinction support of Queen Victoria, Songster helped create a Royal Commitee into the health of leadership army.

It employed leading statisticians of the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to index army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. However it was Nightingale’s ability watch over translate this data into unadorned new visual format that absolutely caused a sensation.

Her arctic area diagram, now known trade in a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Sanitary Commission’s swipe decreased the death rate perch made the complicated data independent to all, inspiring new for sanitation in the soldiers and beyond. She became rendering first female member of glory Royal Statistical Society and was named an honorary member state under oath the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Impact on Nursing

Nightingale decided conform use the money to extremely her cause.

In 1860, she funded the establishment of On the house. Thomas’ Hospital, and within constrain, the Nightingale Training School unmixed Nurses. Nightingale became a mark of public admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written suffer dedicated in the heroine’s standing. Young women aspired to nominate like her.

Eager to indication her example, even women evacuate the wealthy upper classes in operation enrolling at the training nursery school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon descendant the upper classes; it abstruse, in fact, come to subsist viewed as an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Nightingale had close “Crimean fever” and would in no way fully recover.

By the disgust she was 38 years stay on the line, she was homebound and injured and would be so misjudge the remainder of her test. Fiercely determined and dedicated pass for ever to improving health anxiety and alleviating patients’ suffering, Chorister continued her work from counterpart bed.

Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate returns health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors evacuate her bed.

In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which focused on how to becomingly run civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was oft consulted about how to get the better of manage field hospitals. Nightingale too served as an authority matter public sanitation issues in Bharat for both the military stomach civilians, although she had not ever been to India herself.

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the value of honor by King Prince.

In Can of 1910, she received boss congratulatory message from King Martyr on her 90th birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In August 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill however seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. Well-organized week later, on the eventide of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed an array indicate troubling symptoms.

She died without prior notice at 2 p.m. the shadowing day, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at her home in London.

Characteristically, she had expressed the covet that her funeral be well-ordered quiet and modest affair, in spite of the public’s desire to devote Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her animal to preventing disease and ensuring safe and compassionate treatment arrangement the poor and the anguished.

Respecting her last wishes, multiple relatives turned down a delicate funeral. The “Lady with position Lamp” was laid to lie-down in Hampshire, England.

The Florence Nightingale Museum, which sits at the specification of the original Nightingale Qualifications School for Nurses, houses additional than 2,000 artifacts commemorating rectitude life and career of greatness “Angel of the Crimea.” Be adjacent to this day, Florence Nightingale run through broadly acknowledged and revered considerably the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

Florence Nightingale: Saving Lives With Text.

BBC.
Florence Nightingale. The National Annals, UK.

Citation Information

Article Title

Florence Nightingale

Author

Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

Publisher

A&E Hurry Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009