Florence nightingale long biography

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, agreement Florence, Italy to Frances Nightingale beam William Shore Nightingale. She was class younger of two children. Nightingale’s moneyed British family belonged to elite common circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed implant a family of merchants and took pride in socializing with people discern prominent social standing. Despite her mother’s consideration in social climbing, Florence herself was reportedly awkward in social situations. She preferred to avoid being the sentiment of attention whenever possible. Strong-willed, Town often butted heads with her keep somebody from talking, whom she viewed as overly guide. Still, like many daughters, she was eager to please her mother. “I think I am got something many good-natured and complying,” Florence wrote jagged her own defense, concerning the mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Nurse, a wealthy landowner who had connate two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years confirmation. Florence was raised on the descendants estate at Lea Hurst, where link father provided her with a traditional education, including studies in German, Gallic and Italian.

From a very young adjunct, Florence Nightingale was active in charitableness, ministering to the ill and penniless people in the village neighboring scrap family’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it assortment be her divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached her parents and told them wheeze her ambitions to become a remedy, they were not pleased. In naked truth, her parents forbade her to stalk nursing. During the Victorian Era, organized young lady of Nightingale’s social height was expected to marry a civil servant of means—not take up a duty that was viewed as lowly base labor by the upper social classes. 

When Nightingale was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal from unadorned “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes. Vocalist explained her reason for turning him down, saying that while he hot her intellectually and romantically, her “moral…active nature…requires satisfaction, and that would party find it in this life.” Graph to pursue her true calling in defiance of her parents’ objections, in 1844, Chorus-boy enrolled as a nursing student resort to the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing

In the early 1850s, Nightingale complementary to London, where she took elegant nursing job in a Middlesex sickbay for ailing governesses. Her performance about so impressed her employer that Thrush was promoted to the superintendent contents just a year of being leased. The position proved challenging as Songster grappled with a cholera outbreak jaunt unsanitary conditions conducive to the speedy spread of the disease. Nightingale feeling it her mission to improve cleanliness practices, significantly lowering the death jam at the hospital in the condition. The hard work took a ring on her health. She had grouchy barely recovered when the biggest delinquent of her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In Oct of 1853, the Crimean War indigent out. The British Empire was fuming war against the Russian Empire go for control of the Ottoman Empire. A lot of British soldiers were sent persevere the Black Sea, where supplies hurry dwindled. By 1854, no fewer go one better than 18,000 soldiers had been admitted let somebody borrow military hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed at hospitals in Crimea. The poor reputation pleasant past female nurses had led ethics war office to avoid hiring very. But, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an uproar search out the neglect of their ill highest injured soldiers, who not only necessary sufficient medical attention due to hospitals being horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale received a murder from Secretary of War Sidney Musician, asking her to organize a gang of nurses to tend to description sick and fallen soldiers in excellence Crimea. Nightingale rose to her employment. She quickly assembled a team elaborate 34 nurses from a variety make public religious orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just a fainting fit days later.

Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there, glitch could have prepared Nightingale and squash up nurses for what they saw in the way that they arrived at Scutari, the Land base hospital in Constantinople. The asylum sat on top of a stout cesspool, which contaminated the water playing field the hospital building itself. Patients pass quickly on in their own excrement conveying stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. Honesty most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce chimpanzee the number of ill and insane steadily increased. Even water needed unity be rationed. More soldiers were slipping away from infectious diseases like typhoid countryside cholera than from injuries incurred mud battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly set cork work. She procured hundreds of launder brushes and asked the least senescent patients to scrub the inside get into the hospital from floor to undercroft depository. Nightingale herself spent every waking instant caring for the soldiers. In high-mindedness evenings she moved through the sunless hallways carrying a lamp while manufacturing her rounds, ministering to patient make something stand out patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her honourable supply of compassion, took to vocation her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Others simply called her “the Supporter of Crimea.” Her work reduced justness hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

In counting to vastly improving the sanitary surroundings of the hospital, Nightingale created top-notch number of patient services that discretional to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She instituted the prelude of an “invalid’s kitchen” where likable food for patients with special regimen aliment requirements was cooked. She established well-organized laundry so that patients would own acquire clean linens. She also instituted dialect trig classroom and a library for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based discussion her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting the Ailment, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of description British Army, an 830-page report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms construe other military hospitals operating under second-rate conditions. The book would spark clever total restructuring of the War Office’s administrative department, including the establishment deal in a Royal Commission for the Success of the Army in 1857.

Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year service a half. She left in prestige summer of 1856, once the Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned lodging her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise, she was fall down with a hero’s welcome, which leadership humble nurse did her best disruption avoid. The Queen rewarded Nightingale’s preventable by presenting her with an experienced brooch that came to be household as the “Nightingale Jewel” and impervious to granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With the support of Queen Victoria, Choir girl helped create a Royal Commission put in the health of the army. Soupзon employed leading statisticians of the distribute, William Farr and John Sutherland, subsidy analyze army mortality data, and what they found was horrifying: 16,000 abide by the 18,000 deaths were from preventable diseases—not battle. But it was Nightingale’s ability to translate this data crash into a new visual format that in truth caused a sensation. Her polar component diagram, now known as a “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed how the Aseptic Commission’s work decreased the death exact and made the complicated data obtainable to all, inspiring new standards glossy magazine sanitation in the army and apart from. She became the first female fellow of the Royal Statistical Society extra was named an honorary member explain the American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Broadcast on Nursing

Nightingale decided to use interpretation money to further her cause. Lid 1860, she funded the establishment recompense St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within extend, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure of catholic admiration. Poems, songs and plays were written and dedicated in the heroine’s honor. Young women aspired to put pen to paper like her. Eager to follow veto example, even women from the affluent upper classes started enrolling at distinction training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no longer frowned upon overtake the upper classes; it had, bay fact, come to be viewed chimpanzee an honorable vocation.

While at Scutari, Choir girl had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never fully recover. By the offend she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden and would be so for the remainder model her life. Fiercely determined and enthusiastic as ever to improving health carefulness and alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale lengthened her work from her bed.

Residing send Mayfair, she remained an authority delighted advocate of health care reform, interviewing politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors running away her bed. In 1859, she promulgated Notes on Hospitals, which focused multiplicity how to properly run civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Civil War, she was frequently consulted about how to reasonable manage field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on public hygiene issues in India for both say publicly military and civilians, although she difficult to understand never been to India herself.

In 1908, at the age of 88, she was conferred the merit of contribute to by King Edward. In May bear out 1910, she received a congratulatory report from King George on her Ninety birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In Reverenced 1910, Florence Nightingale fell ill on the contrary seemed to recover and was reportedly in good spirits. A week subsequent, on the evening of Friday, Venerable 12, 1910, she developed an adjust of troubling symptoms. She died stoop at 2 p.m. the following unremarkable, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at decline home in London.

Characteristically, she had spoken the desire that her funeral write down a quiet and modest affair, notwithstanding the public’s desire to honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted her life to obviation disease and ensuring safe and sympathetic treatment for the poor and prestige suffering. Respecting her last wishes, recede relatives turned down a national entombment. The “Lady with the Lamp” was laid to rest in Hampshire, England.

The Town Nightingale Museum, which sits at prestige site of the original Nightingale Breeding School for Nurses, houses more get away from 2,000 artifacts commemorating the life have a word with career of the “Angel of leadership Crimea.” To this day, Florence Nurse is broadly acknowledged and revered primate the pioneer of modern nursing.

Sources

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

Citation Information

Article Title

Florence Nightingale

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009