Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp
Florence Nightingale was much more than just ‘that Crimean nurse with the lamp’
What I learned is that after the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, in which thousands of British soldiers died from infections, Nightingale visited almost every hospital in Europe, analyzed them and then wrote up her findings in “Notes on Hospitals,” which became the guide to hospital architecture for the next century.
Florence Nightingale Credit Associated PressIts first sentences changed my idea of Florence Nightingale forever: “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle.”
They fought it out for 15 years. She turned down every suitor; she took every opportunity for training as a nurse, and eventually she won. Her father granted her an annuity, and she took over a hospital on Harley Street where she put her ideas into practice.
More: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp
some more interesting tidbits about Florence:
Although much of Nightingale’s work improved the lot of women everywhere, Nightingale was of the opinion that women craved sympathy and were not as capable as men. She criticized early women’s rights activists for decrying an alleged lack of careers for women at the same time that lucrative medical positions, under the supervision of Nightingale and others, went perpetually unfilled.
She preferred the friendship of powerful men, insisting they had done more than women to help her attain her goals, writing, “I have never found one woman who has altered her life by one iota for me or my opinions.”She often referred to herself in the masculine, as for example “a man of action” and “a man of business”.
She did, however, have several important and long-lasting friendships with women. Later in life she kept up a prolonged correspondence with Irish nun Sister Mary Clare Moore, with whom she had worked in Crimea. Her most beloved confidante was Mary Clarke, an Englishwoman she met in 1837 and kept in touch with throughout her life.