Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), often known as "the lady with the lamp", was the great reformer of hospital nursing. Her reforms have influenced much of modern health care.

Having trained as a nurse (against the wishes of her family), she heard of the sufferings of the wounded in the Crimean War in 1853 and she offered to go to war zone to help.

She arrived with a party of 34 nurses in Crimea in 1854 and gradually managed to take over responsibility for the care of the sick and wounded. The cleanliness of the hospitals were improved and the death rate from diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery fell greatly.

She and her nurses wrote letters home on behalf of the soldiers, banked their wages, and established reading rooms for them. For such things, she gained the undying respect of the British soldiers.

Florence Nightingale's methods were adopted by all British military hospitals and by hospitals in most European countries.

On her return from the Crimea, Nightingale campaigned for the recognition of nursing as a respectable profession for women. She established the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital.