Florence Nightingale - Nursing Pioneer Home > Articles and Resources > Florence Nightingale - Nursing Pioneer Florence Nightingale - Nursing Pioneer Sep 30, 2010 Florence Nightingale spent her life in service to the sick and the wounded. Born into an affluent family, she rejected the usual path that upper class Victorian women took at that time and followed her own heart. Along the way, she reinvented the role of nurses in society and brought to light necessary changes toward the organization of a successful army hospital. Florence Nightingale led a life of significance, but not without enduring a war and sufferings of her own. In the year 1820, Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy. In fact, according to, The Life of Florence Nightingale , she was named after the city. During her childhood, she was able to travel and receive a well-rounded education due to the wealth of her family. The aforementioned article goes on to reveal that Florence realized early on that she would not be satisfied in the expected role of a wife in upper class society. She longed for more fulfilling pursuits.

Visit Nurse Florence Nightingale and you'll learn that against her family's advice, she made the decision to become a nurse. Nurses were not particularly valued at that time in history, but Florence persisted. She travelled to Germany and studied nursing at the Kaiserworth School. The article goes on to describe how her time spent as superintendent of an institution for women stirred her interest in hospital management. The more experience she garnered in hospitals, the more the ideas swirled around in her mind as to how to improve the care given to patients. For further information on Florence Nightingale's history as a nurse, visit: The Story of Florence Nightingale : A summary of the events of Florence Nightingale's life can be found here. Significant Figures in the Life of Florence Nightingale : Here you will find several famous names who figured into the life and accomplishments of Florence Nightingale. A Hero in Florence Nightingale : Read here about how Florence Nightingale influenced the creation of the Red Cross. A Unique Perspective on Florence Nightingale : Florence Nightingale's history as a nurse is detailed here. In 1854, Florence Nightingale saw an opportunity to be of service to the British soldiers in the Crimean War.

She gathered together a large group of nurses and travelled to the hospital in Scutari, Turkey. At The Accomplishments of Florence Nightingale , you'll discover that the conditions faced by the wounded soldiers at the hospital in Scutari were deplorable. There were too few beds for the number of soldiers, and the environment was so unsanitary that rats ran freely through the hospital. The article describes the efforts of Florence Nightingale to set a high standard of cleanliness and efficiency within the hospital. The history, found at Florence Nightingale's Life Spent in Service , reveals that Florence Nightingale sometimes worked twenty-four hours a day caring for the soldiers in the hospital at Scutari. In fact, the soldiers referred to her as, "The Lady of the Lamp," because they would often see her walking through the dark rooms of the hospital at night, checking on patients. After Florence Nightingale left Scutari and returned home, she had a lot of ideas to share with the government of Great Britain concerning vital improvements to the army medical facilities.

According to Florence Nightingale's Fight for Hospital Improvements , she prepared a several hundred page report for the "Royal Commission on the Health of the Army" that contained her thorough data and observations. She believed in striving for the most sanitary conditions possible for the wounded British soldiers. In later years, Florence Nightingale continued her work to make nursing a respected and valued profession for women. Visit The Significant Work of Florence Nightingale , and you'll learn that she wrote several works on the subject of improving the efficiency of nurses. She also founded the Nightingale School of Nursing in London in 1860. Florence Nightingale's dedication to helping the wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War is unquestioned. But during the war, according to the information found at Health Challenges of Florence Nightingale , she became ill herself with what was referred to as Crimean fever. As a consequence of this illness, she became an invalid for three years. Some historians have suggested that she also suffered from post traumatic stress disorder due to her experiences in the Crimean War. Travel to The Health of Florence Nightingale , and there is another theory that her fatigue and fever were due to brucellosis.

Today, there are a number of theories concerning Florence Nightingale's illness in later life. But, there is no certain way to determine precisely what she suffered from. Here are some additional online resources concerning Florence Nightingale and her lifetime of accomplishments: BBC - History - British History in depth: Florence Nightingale: the Lady with the Lamp Print this page Historical figure The common soldier's saviour, the ideological leader of nursing reform, and a pioneering social reformer besides, Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910) is arguably the most famous Victorian after Queen Victoria herself. She belongs to that select band of historical characters who are instantly recognisable: the Lady with the Lamp, ministering to the wounded and dying - albeit by the light of a Grecian lamp rather than the historically accurate, but less romantic, folding Turkish version - is an image permanently imprinted on the British national consciousness. As a woman, too, she is almost unique in that her fame and legend elude the normal categorisations in which women up to her time had achieved immortality: she is neither queen, nor courtesan, beauty nor artist. She belongs to that select band of historical characters who are instantly recognisable...

She is a nationally sanctioned heroine. Until very recently (2002) she was the only woman, alongside the male personalities of Newton, Wellington and Dickens, whose image had ever adorned our paper currency. For nearly 20 years (between 1975 and 1993) her portrait, adapted from Barrett's painting of Nightingale at Scutari, The Mission of Mercy (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), could be found on the £10 note. In short, as the historian Raphael Samuel once wrote, she is one of the 'stock images' of our island story. Why then does her true significance continue to elude us? Generations have been raised on the sentimentalised story of her time as a nurse during the Crimean War, fighting the obstructive army and medical officials to ensure that the sick and wounded were nursed in civilised conditions, and with proper care. But comparatively few of us are aware of the importance of that story's sequel: of how, from her sickbed, Nightingale attempted to supervise the modernisation of nursing, together with advising governments on army reform, sanitation in Britain and India, and hospital design.

Top Romantic myth A large part of the problem, of course, is the persistence of the romantic myth about the ministering angel of Scutari. Few individuals in their own lifetime - and in such a comparatively short period of it, too - have achieved the level of adulation, fame and stature that Nightingale did. By the age of 35 she had already been the object of the most extraordinary outpouring of adoration. She returned from the Crimea in 1856 and chose to live and work for the next half-century in almost complete seclusion, a decision which only further cemented her legendary status. ...the accepted doctrine that she saved soldiers' lives in her hospital suddenly dissolves before our eyes. The myth has to a very large extent obscured the fact that Nightingale's Crimea experience was only the prelude to her more important postwar career. It has prevented us from assessing accurately her achievement at Scutari; when examined closely, the accepted doctrine that she saved soldiers' lives in her hospital suddenly dissolves before our eyes.

And it has also allowed us to forget that Nightingale's priority on returning from the Crimea was not the reform of civilian nursing in Britain, but rather a thorough overhaul of the health of the army in peacetime. It is arguable that the British Army owes far more to Nightingale than nursing in this country does. True, as the standard-bearer of nursing, she played a decisive role in transforming nursing into a profession for single women of impeccable moral standards; but her actual strictures on hospital care were part of a much broader attempt to formulate a policy on public health through the adoption of better sanitation. Top Personal archive Another part of the problem in coming to lasting conclusions about Florence Nightingale is the sheer scale of the materials involved. The enormous collection at the British Library - the second largest personal archive after Gladstone's - is just the tip of the iceberg. At least 14,000 letters are known to survive, along with 147 printed publications, and hundreds of private notes and memoranda. The scale of the material is one reason why, up to now, there has been no authoritative, fully documented biography.

Sir Edward Cook's two-volume Life, published in 1913, is still the best biography, despite the popularity of Cecil Woodham-Smith's Florence Nightingale, which appeared in 1950. Future biographers will be helped by a large-scale project which begins publication this year (2002). Dr Lynn McDonald's projected 16-volume abridged edition of Nightingale's works will help to clarify the reformer's thoughts on such diverse subjects as religion, the army, the use of statistics (of which she was a pioneer), hospitals, women, nursing education, Poor Law reform and so on. ...she remains, above all, a creature of paradox... The weight of material combines with Nightingale's long life - in 60 years of active life she understandably changed her mind many times - making her a difficult person to pin down on a definitive point of view.

And she remains, above all, a creature of paradox: a woman whose work and standing signified much for the idea of women's rights, but who heartily disliked the women's suffrage movement, and found it almost impossible to work in co-operation with other women; a woman who spent much of the decade and beyond, after her return from the Crimea, confined to her bed as a chronic invalid (she is now though to have suffered from a bacterial infection, brucellosis, picked up in the Crimea), but who nevertheless worked with an almost demonic energy in the areas of reform she was interested in; a woman who claimed to dislike the 'fuzz-buzz' about her name, but who manipulated her fame to masterly effect for her own ends. Top Early life Florence Nightingale inherited a liberal-humanitarian outlook from both sides of her family. Her mother's father had sat in the House of Commons for almost half a century as an abolitionist, while Florence's father, William Edward Nightingale, who had inherited an enormous fortune from his uncle, fought hard for the reform of Parliament before settling down to the life of a country gentleman on his estates at Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and Embley Park in Hampshire.

...from an early age Florence... displayed an extraordinary ability for collecting and analysing data... Florence, born in the city of that name in 1820, and her older sister Parthenope, benefited from their father's advanced ideas about women's education. They studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature and philosophy, and from an early age Florence, who was the more academic of the two girls, displayed an extraordinary ability for collecting and analysing data which she would use to great effect in later life. Although, by early-19th-century standards, Nightingale had been given a man's education, she was confined by the conventions of the day, which decreed that, as an upper-middle-class woman, she should spend most of her time in frivolous pursuits and domestic routines. Florence struggled hard to find fulfilment, against the opposition of her family. She felt frustrated by the suffocating existence which denied her the use of her intelligence and energy and which, on several occasions, drove her to the edge of breakdown. 'My present life is suicide', she wrote in 1850.

'I have no desire but to die.' Believing that she heard the voice of God, calling her to his service, she rejected marriage (including an offer from one persistent suitor, the writer and philanthropist, Richard Monckton Milnes), and decided that her destiny lay in nursing. Florence's family, who shared the prevalent view that nursing was a disreputable occupation for someone from their background, were appalled at her decision, and bitterly opposed her. In 1845 her parents refused to allow her to nurse at Salisbury Infirmary, but Florence did manage to spend two periods at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth in Germany, and later visited hospitals in London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Paris, amassing details of hospital conditions and nursing methods. Finally, in 1853, she won her independence - and a small income from her father - by being appointed Superintendant of the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in Harley Street. Crimean mission ...underneath she had an unbreakable resolve... The torture of Nightingale's early years was undoubtedly responsible for the streak of steely ruthlessness that had entered her character.

She was graceful, slender, appealing to look at, and she could be charming when the occasion required; but underneath she had an unbreakable resolve, and also happened to possess one of the great administrative minds of the 19th century. Her sister Parthenope, with whom Florence had a difficult and ambivalent relationship over many years, once wrote that Florence was 'a shocking nurse'. She 'has little or none of what is called charity or philanthropy, she is ambitious - very, and would like... to regenerate the world... I wish she could be brought to see that it is the intellectual part that interests her, not the manual.' Nightingale seized the moment when it came. In 1854, a unique opportunity presented itself when Sidney Herbert, the Minister at War, appointed her to superintend the introduction of female nurses in the Crimea and to lead an expedition of 38 women to take over the management of the barrack hospital at Scutari, a large village on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Herbert had been responding to public outrage at reports in The Times of the suffering of the common soldier caused by the incompetence of the British Army commanders.

It was vital, both for the future of the government and for the cause of nursing in Britain, that Nightingale succeed. Ostensibly she did, and in so doing scored an enormous propaganda victory. In the midst of 'appalling horror...steeped up to our necks in blood', she created order out of chaos. She and her nurses cleaned and equipped the hospital, introducing vital supplies that had been withheld from the sick and wounded, fighting the obstructive army medical corps, and earning the everlasting respect and affection of the common soldier. Hard lessons ...the death toll at Nightingale's hospital was higher than at any other hospital in the East... But if one looks at the historical record more carefully, one begins to realise that, despite Nightingale's work at Scutari, the death-rate among the soldiers did not begin to fall; on the contrary, it began to rise. Historians are now waking up to the shocking truth that the death toll at Nightingale's hospital was higher than at any other hospital in the East, and that her lack of knowledge of the disastrous sanitary conditions at Scutari was responsible.

During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there, ten times more from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery, than from battle wounds. Conditions at the hospital were fatal to the men that Nightingale was trying to nurse: they were packed like sardines into an unventilated building on top of defective sewers. As Hugh Small, author of a recent study of Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, has written, this pioneering woman was effectively presiding over 'a death camp'. A sanitary commission, sent out by Palmerston's government in March 1855, almost six months after Nightingale's arrival at Scutari, flushed out the sewers and improved the ventilation, thereby dramatically reducing the mortality rate. However, Nightingale herself continued to attribute responsibility for the high number of deaths to inadequate nutrition and supplies, and to the army's sending of men across the Black Sea to Scutari when they were already half-dead from exposure.

It was only on her return to Britain, when she began collecting evidence to present before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, that Nightingale changed her mind, reaching the painful conclusion that most of the soldiers at her hospital had been killed by bad sanitation, due to her ignorance. She had helped them to die in cleaner surroundings and greater comfort, but she had not saved their lives. Final years She succeeded in reducing unnecessary deaths in the Army during peacetime... This is a shattering blow to the myth of the Lady with the Lamp, but it was a discovery which drove Nightingale to preach a gospel of fresh air, cleansed drains and public health, for the rest of her campaigning life. She succeeded in reducing unnecessary deaths in the Army during peacetime, before turning her attention to nursing and introducing sanitary concepts into hospitals. Myths are often obscure, but they can also help spread important change. Such is the case with Miss Nightingale. However, history has an important duty to recover the reality from behind the legend.

Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, was perhaps saying something similar when, in a letter to Nightingale in 1879, he observed: 'There was a great deal of romantic feeling about you... when you came home from the Crimea. And now you work on in silence, and nobody knows how many lives are saved by your nurses in hospitals... how many thousands of soldiers... are now alive owing to your forethought and diligence; how many natives of India... have been preserved from famine... by the energy of a sick lady who can scarcely rise from her bed.' Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel by Hugh Small (Constable, 1998) As Miss Nightingale Said...

edited by Monica Baly (Scutari Press, 1991) Ever Yours: Florence Nightingale, selected letters edited by Martha Vicinus and Bea Nergaard (Virago, 1989) Florence Nightingale; Reputation and Power by FB Smith (Croom Helm, 1982) Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham Smith (Constable, 1950) The Life of Florence Nightingale by Sir Edward Cook (Macmillan, 1913) Top About the author Mark Bostridge is the author of Vera Brittain: A Life (1995), and the co-editor of Letters From a Lost Generation (1998), which he also adapted for an acclaimed drama series on BBC Radio 4. His book, Florence Nightingale: the Making of an Icon, is the first fully documented biography of this pioneer of the nursing profession, and is published by Penguin. The Lady with the Lamp Pioneer magazine The Lady with the Lamp Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, ltaly, from where she got her name, but she grew up on her father’s estates in Derbyshire and Hampshire.

From a wealthy Victorian background, when, at 23, she told her family that she wanted to be a nurse they were vigorously against the idea, nursing being then associated with working-class women. Her father: an anti—slavery campaigner; had taught her Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian, as well as philosophy and maths. In I851 he finally agreed to her becoming a nurse. She studied nursing at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth-am-Rhein in Germany. Cramped by Victorian snobbery, she began breaking out to life by visiting hospitals in 1844, not as a peddler of philanthropy, but as one deeply interested in nursing methods. Five years later she went to Egypt via Paris, where she met some St Vincent de Paul Sisters. Fascinated by their methods, she later visited then hospital in Alexandria. This made her determined to end the chaotic state of nursing in England. She returned in I853 and founded the Nightingale Training School in St Thomas’s Hospital for "Invalid Gentlewomen" in Harley Street, London. But when the committee that ran passed a resolution excluding Catholics, she tendered her resignation and the decision was reversed at once.

She devoted the rest of her life to the development of nursing as a profession. ln I853 she was made lady superintendent of a hospital for invalid women in Harley Street, London. A year later the Crimean War began. On one side was Russia, which had invaded Turkey, while Britain and France were on the other. British soldiers who had been sent to Turkey, were soon victims of cholera and malaria. After The London Times newspaper published reports of great numbers of them dying from cholera, there was a widespread outcry, so the Government had to act. Florence, who was a friend of the War Secretary, Sidney Herbert, was sent with 38 women volunteer nurses to an army hospital at Scutari in Turkey. ln 1854 accounts reached England of the appalling conditions of the wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. A Royal Commission was set up to enquire into it. The Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert, one of her friends, chose her as the ideal person to superintend matters in the Crimea.

With a staff of 38 nurses, and Government support, she arrived in Scutari in the Crimea on 4 November in time to see the wounded of the Balaclava blunder being brought in. The conditions they found there were appalling: soldiers still in dirty uniforms, were unwashed, without blankets and were badly fed. There were hardly any medicines. Under such conditions, it was not surprising that probably six times as many died of cholera, typhus and dysentery than from battle wounds. Florence got little assistance and had to seek the help of her friends in The Times newspaper to expose how badly the British army treated its own injured soldiers. She never claimed to have reduced the death rate, but when she came back home and collected evidence for the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army she was convinced of the utmost importance of proper sanitation and this influenced the rest of her career. The public awareness of her work in the War led to the founding of the Nightingale Fund for training nurses, which enabled her to establish the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, in 1860. The Notes on Nursing, which she published, were the basis of the School’s curriculum.

From now on she devoted herself entirely to developing nursing as a profession. As her recent biographer, Mark Bostridge indicates, trained nurses were introduced in British and Irish workhouses around the 1860s. Before this sick people were cared for by the able-bodied patients. Very soon Nightingale nurses were to be found among the professional nurses, not only at home, but also in the U.S., Canada and Australia. The achievements of Florence Nightingale are all the more impressive when one considers the social restraints on women in Victorian Britain. Her career in the Crimea was an epic of heroic patience and compassion. She often worked for 20 hours without a break, supervising every detail of the insanitary and evil-smelling barrack hospital. She visited the wards alone every night, lamp in hand, to comfort the men.

The scene has been told by Longfellow in his poem “Santa Filomena": A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room On England’s annals through the long Hereafter of her speech and song That lights its rays shall cast From portals of the past A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good Heroic womanhood. She carried out her duties with such efficiency that the death-rate in the army hospital fell by 40% in four months. But its medical staff was resentful and uncooperative. Despite the great relief she brought the soldiers, officials tried to hamper her with red tape. Methodical mercy was the dynamic force that sustained her. And as it needed great strength of character to bring her mission in the Crimea to a successful end, it also needed these virtues to sustain her in her own sufferings when she caught the Crimean fever and lay on the brink of death in a hospital at Balaclava. The fever took its toll and when she returned to England she was confined to her sick-room for her last 30 years.

Although now practically a prisoner; she continued to display her passion for method. The fiery reformer became a recluse. We have the spectacle of this frail invalid exercising, through a small band of workers and sick-room interviews with select people, a greater influence on the Royal Commission of Ministers than any person of unofficial standing. To nursing, hospitals, barracks, sanitation — she gave her great gifts of organization. As a result of reforms, the fall in the death-rate was as great as that she had brought about in the hospitals of Scutari. In Indian hospitals the fall in death rates was enormous and was also due to her. The typical Victorian lady would have propped herself up in lace and lavender and resigned herself to self—pity and helplessness. But Florence was no idle lady. She opposed the whole Victorian code of conduct, which condemned women to adopt a pose of uselessness and waste all their talents for service and compassion to the supposed desire for mastery over men. In breaking that code, Florence Nightingale lifted a load of suffering from many people. Official acknowledgement of her courage and genius for administration came with the Order of Merit in 1907.

When she died three years later; aged 90, her legend unfortunately lived on after her; a legend which falsifies her real greatness. Public opinion clamoured for a dove- like figure of Nightingale "the Nurse", so the valiant Nightingale was replaced by a sentimental plaster-cast "Lady with the Lamp", for genteel admiration. Our age has stripped the tinsel from certain eminent Victorians. The great figure of Florence Nightingale benefits from this. And our age, which prides itself on method and precision, will reach a more lasting appreciation of her than that into which she was born. Paul Hurley, SVD Florence Nightingale | Facts Summary Information View articles featuring Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale Summary Florence Nightingale was a guiding force in the field of nursing. She was born May 12, 1820, to William “WEN” and Frances “Fanny” Nightingale in Florence, Italy. Her parents named her after the city she was born in; just over two years earlier they had named her sister—Frances Parthenope “Parthe”—after Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement now part of Naples, Italy.

William Nightingale was the son of a Sheffield, England, banker and had changed his surname to Nightingale from Shore in order to inherit the estate of a great uncle, a mining magnate in Lea, Derbyshire, England. In 1817, William married Frances “Fanny” Smith, the daughter of William Smith, an abolitionist Whig member of Parliament. They embarked on an extended tour of the Mediterranean for their honeymoon, returning to England in 1821 with their two daughters. Florence Nightingale’s Early Life The Nightingales lived at Lea Hall from 1821 to 1825, until their new home, Lea Hurst was completed. However, Fanny deemed Lea Hurst inadequate almost immediately, with “only 15 bedrooms” and located too far from London. It became their summer home. William purchased Embley Park, a large estate in Hampshire, which became their permanent residence.

It was at Embley Park in February 1837 that Florence received a calling from God; she wrote “God has spoke to me and called me to His service.” Though she did not know what that service would be, she knew that the society life her parents and sister enjoyed so much was not going to be enough for her. She had begun a courtship with Richard Monckton Milnes, a childhood friend, and began spending time visiting the poor and sick. She asked to stay on at Lea Hurst after the rest of the family returned to Embley in 1843, but Fanny would not allow it. In the fall of 1845, the village of Wellow was hit with an influenza epidemic, and Florence nursed several people on their deathbed. Florence knew what her calling was by this time, but the rest of her family, her mother in particular, thought she had chosen an occupation at odds with her position in society. At the time, nurses were stereotyped as coming from the lower classes with social standing little better than prostitutes, but Florence was determined to change that.

In 1849, after a long courtship, she finally refused marriage to Milnes, who went on to marry Annabella Hungerford Crewe. He and his wife continued to be staunch supporters and friends of Florence. Florence Nightingale: The Nurse After Florence nursed her great-aunt Elizabeth Evans through her final illness, Fanny considered turning her aunt’s home, Cromford Bridge House, into a nursing home in an attempt to placate Florence, but this was not enough. Florence began studying nursing in earnest, reading everything that had been written about the vocation, volunteering at hospitals, and visiting a nursing institution in Germany for training several times. She began to notice that many of the popular treatments available—blood letting, administering infusions of arsenic, mercury, and opiates—were actually killing more patients than they saved. She believed and began proving she could save more patients from death by caring for their basic needs—keeping them warm, clean, rested, and well-fed. In 1853, in the face of continued opposition and strong objections from her family, Florence was appointed Superintendent of Nurses at the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in London.

She agreed to take the position only on the condition that the institution begin accepting patients of all religions, not just members of the Church of England. At the facility, Florence was able to demonstrate her administrative and nursing skills, cutting the cost of patient care while improving the standard of care. She did not receive pay for this position and was responsible for her own expenses. Florence Nightingale In The Crimean War In March 1854, the Crimean War began when Britain and France declared war on Russia after the latter invaded autonomous areas of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Much of the fighting occurred in the Crimea, on the Black Sea. The British wounded were transported 300 miles across the sea to Scutari (now Üsküdar), just outside of what is now Istanbul, Turkey. Florence had already planned to travel to the Crimea when, in October, the Secretary of War, Sir Sidney Herbert, asked her to gather a group of nurses to nurse the wounded at the military hospital in Scutari. On November 4, 1854, she arrived with 37 other nurses at the Barracks Hospital, a huge, quadrangular building with sides nearly a quarter mile long.

Approximately 18,000 wounded and dying men lay in rooms and lined the corridors. The conditions in the hospital were deplorable: there were miles of corridors stuffed with wounded and dying men; bandages were rags that were clotted with blood; food consisted of watery soup; and sanitary conditions were such that cholera and lice were rampant. During the next 21 months, Florence worked to improve conditions in the hospital. She and her nurses bathed the soldiers, washed their linens, and fed them more substantial food. She eventually established a separate kitchen with her own money to prepare easily digested food for patients. She secured a source of clean drinking water and improved overall sanitary conditions. She set up a system for receiving patients, the basis of modern triage. The mortality rate declined 2% because of her efforts. She personally attended to countless men, many on their deathbeds. She made so many endless rounds, carrying a lamp with her in the late hours of the night, that she became known as the “Lady with the Lamp,” a nickname that was published in an account of her work in The London Times.

Support for Florence’s efforts to improve conditions for the war wounded spilled over into her efforts to establish nursing as a vocation for women. On November 29, 1855, a public meeting was held in London to formally recognize her efforts, resulting in the creation of the Nightingale Fund—the only recognition Florence would accept. She used this fund after the war to help establish the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London in 1860, the first official nursing school in England. Florence traveled to Balaclava in May 1855 to visit hospitals in and around the city. She became ill with “Crimean fever”—probably brucellosis, a bacterial infection that became chronic. She was acutely ill for 12 days, and although she recovered enough to return to Scutari and her duties there, she periodically became chronically ill at least through the 1870s. The Crimean War ended in February 1856 and in March, Florence returned to Balaclava, staying there until the hospitals closed. She returned privately to England, arriving at Lea Hurst in August.

In September, she met with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Balmoral to discuss improvements that should be made to the military hospital system. From 1857 onward, Florence was periodically bedridden as the result of Crimean fever; however, she continued to work—writing, advising, and mentoring. In 1857, she issued a confidential report on the army medical department during the Crimean War. The next year, she published Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army. In both works, she used statistics to prove her point and was a pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics—the polar area diagram was also known as the Nightingale rose diagram. A Pioneer In Nursing Her reports and testimony before a commission on the sanitary conditions of the army led to numerous improvements and the opening of an army medical college in 1861, a year after the Nightingale Training School was established. Florence also advised the army on sanitary conditions in India during and after the India Mutiny of 1857, which led to the establishment of a Sanitary Department within the Indian government. In 1859, Florence published Notes on Nursing.

She intended the book to help in the practice of nursing, not to be a comprehensive guide—it continues to be used as an introduction to nursing today. During the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Florence was asked for advice by various countries and independently by doctors and nurses. In the 1870s, she mentored Linda Richards, the first professionally trained American nurse, who established nurse training programs in the U.S. and Japan. Florence helped establish numerous nursing organizations throughout the remainder of her life and received numerous awards for her work, including the German order of the Cross of Merit and the French gold medal of Secours aux Blessés Militaires. Queen Victoria awarded her the Royal Red Cross in 1883. She was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John in 1904 and became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit in 1907. She was given the Honorary Freedom of the City of London in 1908.

On May 10, 1910 she was presented with the badge of honor of the Norwegian Red Cross Society. On August 13 of that same year, Florence died peacefully at her home in London. An offer was extended for burial at Westminster Abbey but her family refused, burying her in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire, close to Embley Park. The Lady With The Lamp By Deborah Pulliam Florence Nightingale was distinctly not the romantic, retiring Victorian gentlewoman most of us imagine. She was a bright, tough, driven professional, a brilliant organizer and statistician, and one of the most influential women in 19th-century England. The best-known aspect of her life–nursing wounded soldiers at Scutari Hospital in Turkey during the Crimean War–comprised, in fact, a very small part of her 50-year career, but provided the springboard from which it all began.

Looking through a rough reproduction window at the London museum that bears her name is a little like peering over Nightingale’s shoulder in the Crimea and confronting the intimate details of life there–including her hand-drawn plan of the nurses’ quarters in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, her personal seal and wax for letters, some of her books and her dispatch case, as well as an original letter written from the hospital and her famous lamp. The museum’s permanent exhibit documents not only the war years, but also follows Nightingale throughout her extraordinary but largely overlooked life. A brief introductory film emphasizes her wealthy Victorian upbringing and expectations of a brilliant social career. In fact, Florence Nightingale accomplished so much during her full life that it is intriguing to wonder how she might be remembered had the public not become so fixated on the romantic image of her night-time rounds by candlelight at Scutari. This small museum highlights all of her many accomplishments: introducing sanitary science to nursing and the British Army; raising the image of the British soldier from a brawling lowlife to a heroic working man; transforming nursing from an occupation which previously had been considered fit only for prostitutes to a respectable profession; establishing a nursing school at St.

Thomas’s Hospital; laying out the principles of nursing in print in 1860; and revolutionizing the public health system of India without leaving England. Ironically, during much of her long and accomplished life (she died in 1910, at the age of 90) the general public assumed she was already dead. Nightingale actually encouraged this misinformation. She returned from the Crimea under an assumed name and walked the last few miles to her parents’ home from the train station. Uninterested in her celebrity status, she wanted only to continue her work in peace and quiet. She refused photographs and interviews, and avoided anything not directly related to her work for a Royal Commission investigating health in the British Army. Although she was undoubtedly the driving force behind the work, she almost never appeared in public. Her thoughts and work were with the army. In a private note, written at the end of 1856, she wrote: Oh my poor men who endured so patiently. I feel I have been such a bad mother to you to come home and leave you lying in your Crimean grave. Seventy-three percent in eight regiments during six months from disease alone–who thinks of that now?

But if I could carry any one point which would prevent any part of the recurrence of this our colossal calamity then I should have been true to the cause of those brave dead. In the post-war period, Nightingale began studying new designs for modern hospitals all over Europe, in order to help the army reform its health and sanitary systems. In Paris she found a revolutionary design in which separate units, or pavilions, made up one large hospital. By making each pavilion a light and airy self-contained unit, the hospital minimized the spread of infections. She later succeeded in promoting this design in England. Her research culminated in Notes on Hospitals, published in 1859, which combined two papers presented the year before at the Social Science Congress. Her words had a profound effect. She addressed every aspect of hospital management, from the purchase of iron bedsteads to replace the wooden ones, to switching to glass cups instead of tin. The 108-page book went on into three editions and established Nightingale once more as an international authority. Her advice and approval were sought for hospitals all over Europe, from Holland to Portugal and even far-off India. In particular, the governors of St.

Thomas’s Hospital in London consulted with her on a matter key to the hospital’s future. The ancient hospital in Southwark was situated on land needed by railroads for a new line. The hospital’s governors had to decide whether they should sell the entire property and build a new facility in a better location, or allow the railroad to buy only part of the land and rebuild the hospital on the remainder. Some governors felt the hospital should stay where it had been for hundreds of years, serving the same community. When they asked Nightingale for her opinion, rather than simply accepting the notion that the hospital was in fact serving patients in the area, she drew up and analyzed statistics on the origin of St. Thomas’s patients and proved that most did not come from the immediate neighbourhood as the governors had assumed. She also compiled a convincing body of statistics to prove that moving the hospital to a healthier site would improve the patients’ chances of recovery. After completing her analysis, in a telling display of political acumen, she sent it not to the body of governors as a whole, but to one particular governor: the Prince Consort. In the end, the governors decided to move St. Thomas’s to its present location in Lambeth.

At the time, Nightingale deemed the site to be unhealthy; nevertheless, the hospital was constructed with the pavilions she endorsed, and was finally completed in 1871. If you look carefully from Westminster Bridge, you can see the remaining pavilions wedged in between more contemporary parts of the hospital that have since engulfed the original. Ask for directions in the museum, and you can walk through the new parts of the hospital to Nightingale’s original entrance hall. Success piled on success. In 1860, after five years of gruelling work, she completed a voluminous report that resulted in the development of an Army Medical School in addition to greatly improved army barracks, hospitals, and living conditions for soldiers. Also in 1860 she founded the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Far more than merely giving her name to the school, Nightingale personally advised on all matters of instruction, admissions supervision, and discipline. Her involvement extended beyond her professional duties; she often invited graduates to tea and kept in touch with them long after they had launched their careers.

Nightingale also published a 75-page booklet, Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. A popular book, its initial reception still did not foretell of its lasting importance. The book is still in print today in a facsimilie of the first edition and in a reprint of the second enlarged edition. In fact, it is the best-selling item in the museum’s small shop. “I think if you’re only going to buy one thing from our shop, it’s going to be Notes on Nursing,” says Alex Attewell, curator of the museum. While medical knowledge has significantly increased since Nightingale’s time, her common sense and wisdom still forms a solid basis for caring for people. She believed, first and foremost, in hygiene (fresh air, cleanliness, clean water, proper drainage, and plenty of light), and constant consideration for the patient’s feelings. In one particularly empathetic passage, she addresses the importance of a quiet environment: Unnecessary noise, or noise that creates an expectation in the mind, is that which hurts a patient. It is rarely the loudness of the noise, the effect upon the organ of the ear itself, which appears to affect the sick.

How well a patient will generally bear, e.g., the putting up of a scaffolding close to the house, when he cannot bear the talking, still less the whispering, especially if it be a familiar voice, outside his door. Nightingale’s common-sense approach to health is a main theme throughout the museum’s exhibits. “We’re interested in exploring what of her writing is still relevant today,” Attewell says. Because of her work on army medical reform, she was asked to contribute to a study of the problems of health in India. British troops on the subcontinent had the highest mortality rates of all–in 1859 the death rate was 69 per thousand, as opposed to 17 per thousand in England. Through statistics and endless study, (compiled, amazingly, without ever visiting India) she discovered what no one else had noticed: that the English way of life could simply not be transferred to a hot climate. Her 23-page treatise on conditions in India (as compared with the government’s 2,028 pages of small print) was printed at her own expense and sent to anyone with influence, including Queen Victoria.

Once again, Nightingale revealed what no one even wanted to consider: that terrible living and working conditions were killing British troops as they had in the Crimea. Yet again she emphasized that improving the health of British troops would require improving sanitary standards as a whole. For four years Nightingale worked daily on the meticulous paperwork and statistics required to reform life in India. Her influence went beyond paperwork. Newly assigned viceroys to India visited her home for briefings before setting out for their new post. In 1896, Nightingale “retired to her bed”, but, far from slowing down, she continued working on home health visiting, as the English call public health. “Her writing is extraordinarily relevant to today’s health visiting,” Attewell says. In an attempt to find out just how pertinent her writing is to the health profession today, the museum sent out questionnaires to 700 public health supervisors around the country. More than half came back almost immediately. “Usually you’d think a 10 per cent response would be good,” Attewell says.

“I think the interest we’ve got in the questionnaire shows there’s still extraordinary interest in her writing.” Yet more evidence of the timeless value in the work and wisdom of this remarkable woman. Copyright 2014 British Heritage. UAB - Reynolds-Finley Historical Library - The Life of Florence Nightingale The Life of Florence Nightingale More The Life of Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 to wealthy English parents traveling in Florence, Italy. Both Florence and her sister were named after the Italian cities in which they were born – her sister Parthenope was born in Naples and given the Greek name for its ancient city. At home in England, the Nightingales divided their time between two houses, Lea Hurst in Derbyshire for the summer and Embley in Hampshire for the winter. The two girls were educated by their father, and Florence, in particular, excelled academically. With regard to the marriage and social life of their daughters, the Nightingales held high expectations.

However, Florence had other ideas, because as a teenager in 1837 she received a "divine calling” to do God’s work, which sparked her advocacy of social and health care causes and eventually led her to establish nursing as a distinct profession. The period between the later half of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th has been described by medical historian Fielding Garrison as the “dark age” of nursing. Nurses in those days were typically poor, unskilled and often associated with immoral behavior (1). The hospitals they served held equally low reputations as unclean, disorderly, and infection breeding. They were often regarded merely as places to die. So it is not difficult to see why Florence Nightingale’s family, wealthy and respectable as they were, discouraged her from selecting this “unsuitable” profession. But Florence went against her parent’s wishes, refused a prospective marriage and in 1851 trained as a nurse in Kaiserswerth, Germany at Pastor Theodore Fliedner’s hospital and school for Lutheran deaconesses. Fliedner’s school was one of the earliest institutions for the proper training of nurses outside of the Catholic religious orders (2).

In 1853 Nightingale went for additional training in Paris with the Sisters of Mercy (3). After her return to England, Florence took a position as superintendent for London’s Establishment of Gentlewomen during Illness in 1853. ( Click here to view a letter written by Florence Nightingale to a Mrs. James on September 20, 1853 about patient admittance, payment, demographics and lengths of stay at London’s Establishment of Gentlewomen during Illness). Nursing during the Crimean War Florence Nightingale is probably most famous for her work during the Crimean War (1854-1856). Responding to unpopular newspaper reports of the horrendous situation in the English war camp hospitals, Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, a personal friend of Nightingale, consented to let her organize and manage a group of female nurses to go to Turkey. On November 4, 1854, Nightingale and 38 nurses arrived in Scutari, the location of the British camp outside Constantinople.

The doctors originally did not welcome the incoming female nurses, but as the number of patients escalated, their help was needed in the overcrowded, undersupplied, and unsanitary hospital (4). Under Florence’s leadership, the nurses brought cleanliness, sanitation, nutritious food and comfort to the patients. Nightingale was known for providing the kind of personal care, like writing letters home for soldiers, that comforted them and improved their psychological health. Her group of nurses transformed the hospital into a healthy environment within six months, and as a result, the death rate of patients fell from 40 to 2 percent (5). In 1857, Florence returned home a heroine. It was the soldiers in Crimea that initially named her the "Lady with the Lamp" because of the reassuring sight of her carrying around a lamp to check on the sick and wounded during the night, and the title remained with her (6). (Thirty-four years to the date (November 4, 1888) after she landed in Scutari for the Battle of Inkermann of the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale wrote a letter to her friend Thomas Gillham Hewlett remembering the heroic nature of soldiers.

Click here to view this letter .) Upon her return from the Crimean War, she devoted the next few years to the Royal Commission investigating health in the British Army. It was her discussions with Queen Victoria on the conditions of the camp hospitals that sparked the commission’s formation. Also, Nightingale's statistical data and analysis strongly influenced the commission's findings, which resulted in great public health advances in the British army (7). Professional Nursing Pioneer In 1859, Florence Nightingale’s book Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not was published. Based on knowledge acquired at school in Kaiserswerth and while nursing the sick during the Crimean War, Notes on Nursing provides a simple but practical discussion of good patient care, along with helpful hints. According to Florence Nightingale, hygiene, sanitation, fresh air, proper lighting, a good diet, warmth, quietness and attentiveness were necessary conditions for hospitals and were to be ensured by trained nurses. Taken for granted today, her commonsense advice helped transform hospitals from death houses to sanctuaries of care. This work quickly became a classic introduction to nursing, and has remained in publication to the present day (8).

During the war a public subscription fund was set up for Florence Nightingale to continue her education of nurses in England, and the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital opened in 1860. The education of recruits involved a year of practical instruction in the wards, supplemented with courses of lecturing, and followed by two years of work experience in the hospital (9). After graduation, many of the students staffed British hospitals, and others spread the Nightingale education system to other countries. Through her work and her school, Florence Nightingale is responsible for elevating the profession of nursing to an honorable status. She also wrote about 200 books, pamphlets and reports on hospital, sanitation, and other health-related issues, as well as contributing to the field of statistics (10). Throughout her life she provided advice on a variety of health care issues to associates all over the globe. Though ill and bedridden for much of her later life, Nightingale managed to continue her great work through correspondence. Endnotes 1. Garrison, Fielding. An introduction to the history of medicine. 4th ed. (Philadelphia & London: W. B.

Saunders, Co., 1929), 772. 2. ibid. Florence Nightingale Medicine: Health, Doctors, Nurses, Midwives Florence Nightingale Biographies, common questions, information on nurses and nursing, bibliographies, and other resources on Florence Nightingale, the "Lady with the Lamp." She made history with her nursing work in the Crimean War and helped shake up the field of medicine. Her opinions on women physicians and her invention of the pie chart are included. Sign Up for Our Free Newsletters Thanks, You're in! “The lady with the lamp” and her contributions to modern nursing « UT Health Science Center Library “The lady with the lamp” and her contributions to modern nursing Florence Nightingale, 1856 The largest profession, and the profession that is consistently ranked as the most trusted profession in the United States, is that of nursing. The foundations of nursing practiced across the world were pioneered by the greatest figure in nursing history, Florence Nightingale. She helped to define nursing practice by suggesting that nurses did not need to know all about the disease process like the medical field.

They needed to know how to care for a patient through the environment, helping the patient deal with symptoms and changes in function related to illness. Early Life and Training Florence Nightingale was born May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy and was named after the city of her birth. She died on August 13, 1910, at the age of 90 after living a long, productive life in which her ideas and contributions helped to shape the way nursing is practiced in the western world. Florence Nightingale was born to an upper-class English family. Her father William Shore Nightingale was a wealthy landowner and her mother Frances Nightingale a socialite who hailed from a family of wealthy merchants. From a young age Florence Nightingale assisted the poor and ill people in the village neighboring her estate, and by the age of 16 she considered nursing to be her life’s calling. In the Victorian era, nursing was considered a lowly and menial profession in England, and Florence Nightingale’s refusal to marry at age 17 to pursue it disappointed her parents.

In July 1850 Nightingale enrolled for 2 weeks of training and enrolled again in July 1851 for 3 more months at the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth, Germany. There she learned basic nursing skills such as the value of patient observation and good hospital organization. This training and later experiences helped Nightingale form her revolutionary theories. These theories were further enhanced at Middlesex hospital for governesses, where Nightingale worked as a superintendent. She struggled there to control a cholera outbreak and the unsanitary conditions that aided in the rapid spread of the disease. She made it her mission to improve the hygiene practices of the facility, which ended up significantly reducing mortality at the hospital. The Crimean War and the Development of Nursing Practice The Crimean War of 1853 catapulted Nightingale and her methods to fame. During the war a scandal broke out about the lack of sufficient medical attention and the unsanitary and inhumane conditions to which injured soldiers were being subjected. The poor reputation earned by previous female nurses was the main cause of the lack of adequate staff.

In an effort to better the treatment of the injured soldiers, Secretary of War Sidney Herbert asked Nightingale to organize a corps of nurses to tend to and assist the sick and injured. On arrival in Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople, Nightingale found patients lying on their own excrement, rodents and other pests scurrying among them, and a complete lack of sanitary conditions, which made infectious diseases the number one killer of soldiers rather than battle wounds. Faced with this daunting task, Nightingale implemented some concepts that are at the core of nursing practice to this day: Paper lantern used by Florence Nightingale, 1855 Infection control – She did this by cleaning the entire hospital from top to bottom and requiring proper hygiene, such as clean linens, for the soldiers. This is incredible because at the time microbes and the chain of infection was not known. Self-care (requiring patients to do things for themselves in order to gain independence and promote healing) – Nightingale required the least infirm patients at the hospital to assist in cleaning it. Assessment – She made rounds at night with her lamp, talking to and assessing the condition of her patients.

Nursing assessments are the core of nursing, and all nursing actions are based on them. With that in mind, it’s only fitting that her habit of making assessment rounds was the reason why the soldiers nicknamed her the “the lady with the lamp.” Therapeutic communication – During her rounds Nightingale talked to her patients, offering them empathy and compassion in their moment of despair. Spiritual nursing – Nightingale ministered to patients who were dying, bringing them comfort in their last hour. Public health advocacy – Nightingale wrote an 830 page report analyzing and proposing reforms for military hospitals operating under poor conditions. The implementation of these concepts in the battle field hospital setting by Florence Nightingale reduced the death rate at the hospital by two thirds. Recognition and Role in Nursing Education After the war she returned home to a hero’s welcome and was awarded the “Nightingale Jewel,” a brooch with an engraved dedication from Queen Victoria, for her service in the Crimea. She was also granted a prize of $250,000 from the British government and used the money to establish St. Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.

Her work lifted the reputation of nursing from lowly and menial to a respectable profession to which many upper-class women aspired. In 1859 Florence Nightingale published a 136 book page entitled Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not. The book was meant to give hints for thought on how to nurse a sick patient rather than to serve as a comprehensive manual on how to become a nurse. The book covers topics vital to nurses today such as confidentiality, cleanliness, observation (assessment), quality and safety. The P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library owns a copy of this book. Front cover of Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not. P. I. Nixon Medical Historical Library Title Page of Notes on Nursing: What is is and What it is Not. P. I. Nixon Medical Historical Library For more information on the Nixon Library and Nightingale’s book, contact Lisa Matye Finnie, Special Collections Librarian, at finnie@uthscsa.edu or 210-567-2406. Sources: 1. “Top 50 Occupations with the Largest Employment.” Career One Stop.

Viewed 6 Feb 2015. 2. “Nurses Once Again Top Gallup’s Annual Survey of Most Trusted Professionals.” Advance Healthcare Network. 13 Dec 2013. Viewed 6 Feb 2015. 3. Potter, P., & Perry, A. (2013). Fundamentals of nursing. (8 ed., p. 44). St. Louis: Elsevier. 4. Selanders, L. (29, October 2014). Florence nightingale. Viewed 2/6/2015. 5. Florence nightingale. Viewed 2/6/2015. 6. Notes on Nursing. Wikipedia. Viewed 2/6/2015. 7. Harris, M. (2002). Remembering florence nightingale. Home Healthcare Nurse, 20(5), 291-293. Viewed 2/6/2015. Images: Florence Nightingale, 1856. N.d. Photograph. National Army MuseumWeb. 6 Feb 2015.

< Paper lantern used by Florence Nightingale, 1855. N.d. Photograph. National Army MuseumWeb. 6 Feb 2015. < Appreciatively, Florence Nightingale (TV Movie 1985) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The fact-based story of the pioneer of nursing known as 'the Lady with the Lamp'.

Director: a list of 15 titles created 15 Jul 2011 a list of 9996 titles created 26 Jun 2012 a list of 1037 titles created 22 Apr 2013 a list of 40 titles created 02 Nov 2013 a list of 199 titles created 12 Dec 2015 Search for " Florence Nightingale " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Title: Florence Nightingale (TV Movie 1985) 7.7/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Add Image Add an image Do you have any images for this title? Edit Storyline This is the fact-based story of an aristocratic woman who defies Victorian society to reform hospital sanitation and to define the nursing profession as it is known today. After volunteering to travel to Scutari to care for the wounded soldiers, who are victims of the Crimean war, she finds herself very unwelcome and faces great opposition for her new way of thinking.

However through her selfless acts of caring, she quickly becomes known as 'The Lady with the Lamp', the caring nurse whose shadow soldiers kiss. Written by CindyH 7 April 1985 (UK) See more » Also Known As: A História de Florence See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Claire Bloom has starring billing in the main titles but her role is a extended cameo not a lead. See more » Quotes Richard Milnes : [voice over, as Narrator] While Florence's fame grew in the world of British medicine, England found itself entangled in a war with Russia. The glow of pride which followed the first victories on the Black Sea, was soon to be replaced by a feeling of national shame, as over half the army's casualties occured not on the battlefield, but in its hospitals. The opening credits appear on a background of monochrome period drawings. See more » Connections Excellent biographical movie about the Lady of the Lamp.

7 March 2001 | by Kjulkowski (Oregon) – See all my reviews Jaclyn Smith gives an excellent portrayal of Florence Nightingale, the proper English lady who left her prim, aristocratic lifestyle to provide care and treatment of injured soldiers in the poorest conditions. Although this is a movie based on the life of The Lady of the Lamp, Ms. Smith brings to life the history of nursing and the birth of sterilization and sanitation. This is a most enlightening movie which is entertaining as well. I highly recommend the movie. 11 of 12 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes

Question: Where was nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale ("the lady with the lamp") born?
Answer: Florence, Italy