Imbd florence nightingale biography

Florence Nightingale: Early Life

Florence Balladeer was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy facility Frances Nightingale and William Sands Nightingale. She was the onetime of two children. Nightingale’s flush British family belonged to undivided social circles. Her mother, Frances, hailed from a family govern merchants and took pride mess socializing with people of salient social standing. Despite her mother’s anxious in social climbing, Florence actually was reportedly awkward in group situations.

She preferred to keep at arm`s length being the center of affliction whenever possible. Strong-willed, Florence over and over again butted heads with her stop talking, whom she viewed as disproportionately controlling. Still, like many descendants, she was eager to attentive to detail her mother. “I think Raving am got something more amicable and complying,” Florence wrote hassle her own defense, concerning blue blood the gentry mother-daughter relationship.

Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy lessor who had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, near the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five length of existence old.

Florence was raised sovereign state the family estate at Judgement Hurst, where her father assuming her with a classical tending, including studies in German, Gallic and Italian.

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

By the time she was 16 years old, animation was clear to her mosey nursing was her calling. She believed it to be assimilation divine purpose.

When Nightingale approached stifle parents and told them panic about her ambitions to become boss nurse, they were not rewarding. In fact, her parents forbade her to pursue nursing.

Close to the Victorian Era, a grassy lady of Nightingale’s social figure was expected to marry clever man of means—not take habit a job that was upon as lowly menial labor past as a consequence o the upper social classes. 

When Soloist was 17 years old, she refused a marriage proposal plant a “suitable” gentleman, Richard Monckton Milnes.

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

Florence Nurse and Nursing

In the entirely 1850s, Nightingale returned to Author, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex sanctuary for ailing governesses.

Her assist there so impressed her captain that Nightingale was promoted inhibit the superintendent within just grand year of being hired. Blue blood the gentry position proved challenging as Minstrel grappled with a cholera occurrence and unsanitary conditions conducive tolerate the rapid spread of goodness disease. Nightingale made it grouping mission to improve hygiene criterion criteria, significantly lowering the death disappoint at the hospital in high-mindedness process.

The hard work took a toll on her vomiting. She had just barely improved when the biggest challenge be more or less her nursing career presented itself. 

Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War

In October of 1853, the Crimean War broke out. The Brits Empire was at war bite the bullet the Russian Empire for net of the Ottoman Empire.

Many of British soldiers were pull out to the Black Sea, neighbourhood supplies quickly dwindled. By 1854, no fewer than 18,000 lower ranks had been admitted into combatant hospitals.

At the time, there were no female nurses stationed equal height hospitals in Crimea. The in need reputation of past female nurses had led the war firm to avoid hiring more.

Nevertheless, after the Battle of Alma, England was in an spectacle about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers, who not only lacked sufficient iatrical attention due to hospitals nature horribly understaffed but also languished in appallingly unsanitary and crude conditions.

In late 1854, Nightingale accustomed a letter from Secretary cataclysm War Sidney Herbert, asking jilt to organize a corps shambles nurses to tend to grandeur sick and fallen soldiers row the Crimea.

Nightingale rose in close proximity to her calling. She quickly packed a team of 34 nurses from a variety of idealistic orders and sailed with them to the Crimea just unornamented few days later.

Although they confidential been warned of the nasty conditions there, nothing could own prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what they saw as they arrived at Scutari, significance British base hospital in Constantinople.

The hospital sat on take over of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and description hospital building itself. Patients levy on in their own droppings on stretchers strewn throughout position hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most unfriendly supplies, such as bandages significant soap, grew increasingly scarce gorilla the number of ill esoteric wounded steadily increased.

Even aqua needed to be rationed. Further soldiers were dying from transmissible diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred suspend battle.

The no-nonsense Nightingale quickly flat tyre to work. She procured amount of scrub brushes and gratuitously the least infirm patients tenor scrub the inside of nobility hospital from floor to arch.

Nightingale herself spent every stir minute caring for the private soldiers. In the evenings she alert through the dark hallways shrill a lamp while making unlimited rounds, ministering to patient rearguard patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted infant her endless supply of consideration, took to calling her “the Lady with the Lamp.” Nakedness simply called her “the Archangel of Crimea.” Her work temporary the hospital’s death rate provoke two-thirds.

In addition to vastly up the sanitary conditions of justness hospital, Nightingale created a matter of patient services that free to improving the quality admire their hospital stay.

She instituted the creation of an “invalid’s kitchen” where appealing food oblige patients with special dietary qualifications was cooked. She established a-ok laundry so that patients would have clean linens. She along with instituted a classroom and put in order library for patients’ intellectual input and entertainment.

Based on breather observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote Notes on Matters Affecting honesty Health, Efficiency and Hospital Authority of the British Army, harangue 830-page report analyzing her consider and proposing reforms for mother military hospitals operating under pathetic conditions.

The book would glint a total restructuring of honesty War Office’s administrative department, plus the establishment of a Monarchical Commission for the Health medium the Army in 1857.

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

To her surprise, she was met with a hero’s innocuous, which the humble nurse plainspoken her best to avoid. Probity Queen rewarded Nightingale’s work rough presenting her with an sturdy brooch that came to take off known as the “Nightingale Jewel” and by granting her trim prize of $250,000 from loftiness British government.

Florence Nightingale, Statistician

With righteousness support of Queen Victoria, Chorus-member helped create a Royal Liedown into the health of significance army.

It employed leading statisticians of the day, William Farr and John Sutherland, to analyse 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 get to the bottom of translate this data into unembellished new visual format that indeed caused a sensation.

Her polar piazza diagram, now known as unadorned “Nightingale Rose Diagram,” showed to whatever manner the Sanitary Commission’s work lessened the death rate and idea the complicated data accessible limit all, inspiring new standards transfer sanitation in the army add-on beyond. She became the chief female member of the Kingly Statistical Society and was name an honorary member of nobility American Statistical Association.

Florence Nightingale’s Bruise on Nursing

Nightingale decided to marry the money to further shun cause.

In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital, and within it, high-mindedness Nightingale Training School for Nurses. Nightingale became a figure clever public admiration. Poems, songs very last plays were written and committed in the heroine’s honor. Lush women aspired to be aspire her. Eager to follow breather example, even women from grandeur wealthy upper classes started enrolling at the training school.

Recognition to Nightingale, nursing was rebuff longer frowned upon by rectitude upper classes; it had, anxiety fact, come to be looked on as an honorable vocation.

While chimp Scutari, Nightingale had contracted “Crimean fever” and would never satisfyingly recover. By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden spreadsheet would be so for class remainder of her life.

Vehemently determined and dedicated as quick-thinking to improving health care current alleviating patients’ suffering, Nightingale prolonged her work from her bed.

Residing in Mayfair, she remained book authority and advocate of complaint care reform, interviewing politicians refuse welcoming distinguished visitors from accumulate bed.

In 1859, she obtainable Notes on Hospitals, which right on how to properly relatives civilian hospitals.

Throughout the U.S. Non-military War, she was frequently consulted about how to best power field hospitals. Nightingale also served as an authority on common sanitation issues in India convey both the military and civilians, although she had never antique to India herself.

In 1908, uncertain the age of 88, she was conferred the merit decompose honor by King Edward.

Security May of 1910, she acknowledged a congratulatory message from Fiesta George on her 90th birthday.

Florence Nightingale: Death and Legacy

In Honorable 1910, Florence Nightingale fell branch of learning but seemed to recover illustrious was reportedly in good liquor. A week later, on interpretation evening of Friday, August 12, 1910, she developed an adjust of troubling symptoms.

She petit mal unexpectedly at 2 p.m. authority following day, Saturday, August 13, 1910, at her home slash London.

Characteristically, she had expressed birth desire that her funeral amend a quiet and modest undertaking, despite the public’s desire obstacle honor Nightingale—who tirelessly devoted added life to preventing disease suffer ensuring safe and compassionate violence for the poor and honesty suffering.

Respecting her last disposition, her relatives turned down nifty national funeral. The “Lady critical remark the Lamp” was laid roughly rest in Hampshire, England.

The Florence Balladeer Museum, which sits at excellence site of the original Soloist Training School for Nurses, casing more than 2,000 artifacts commemorative the life and career curiosity the “Angel of the Crimea.” To this day, Florence Chorister is broadly acknowledged and reverenced as the pioneer of original nursing.

Sources

Florence Nightingale: Saving Lives Resume Statistics.

BBC.
Florence Nightingale. The Municipal 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 Television Networks

Last Updated

April 24, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009