Florence Nightingale was born in Florence Italy on May 12th 1820. She was born into a wealthy family and was well known for being both a nurse and activist and the founder of modern nursing. She made outstanding contributions and became a hero, with her guidance hospitals became clean and sanitary place where the mortality rate dropped.

Being educated at home by her father she gained vast knowledge but only ever wanted to serve others and become a nurse, much to her parent’s disapproval who looked upon the profession of nursing as unattractive. Florence felt a calling from God to serve others and she resolved she would try to follow God’s will.

Despite her parents disapproval she went ahead and trained as a nurse.

In 1854/55 two years after the Crimean war broke out Florence was asked to go there and organise a group of nurses. They arrived at Selimiye barracks in Turkey, this was the British camp, they found the soldiers lacked even basic first aid and the number of casualties was rising. Although at first the Doctors only wanted the group of nurses to clean the hospital this soon changed as the casualties started pouring in.

Florence and her team of nurses made the conditions as clean as possible. The rats that ran the hospital wards were disposed of and even though they could quite easily have used the double the amount of beds for the men, they were dealt with as well as they could possibly be. The medical staff were over worked and unable to cope with the growing casualties.

Medicines were in very short supply, hygiene was not bothered about and mass infections roamed the beds of the soldiers. The first winter Florence spent at the hospital the death rate grew. The lack of sanitation, poor nutrition and exhausted soldiers all living on backed up sewers were no match for the typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery and the death toll reached the highest of all hospitals.

After a sanitary commission had been sent out by the British government in 1855 the sewers were flushed and the ventilation was improved, death rates were greatly improved.

‘The lady with the lamp’ soon became her nick name as she wandered the wards tending to the injured soldiers at night.

After the war, in peace time Florence continued to fight for the for better sanitary conditions and living conditions. The Nightingale school of training for nurses opened in 1860 and her name still exists as a nursing pledge today.

Of her relationships through life, she was asked by very wealthy men to marry but turning them all down she preferred the friendship of very strong men, she had little time for feeble women although there were a few women that played a solid and passionate part in her life. Her Aunt and her female cousin, an Irish nun whom she met in Crimea and a Mary Clarke where all life long friends.

Some say she was celibate all her life despite these close female friends and a letter that stated she wrote ‘I have lived and slept in the same bed with an English countess and Prussian farm women. No woman has excited passions among women more than I have.’ Some people claim she had syphilis but these were all rumours made by a priest who was opposing a church proposal to commemorate her. If it hadn’t been for Florence Nightingale we wouldn’t have the fantastic nurses we have today.

Florence died in her sleep age 90 in 1910.