Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale and a Disreputable Profession

Florence Nightingale, the greatest of war nurses, is considered to be the founder of modern nursing. Born in the Italian city for which she was named, “The Lady with the Lamp” spent her childhood in England.  At seventeen, she is said to have heard the voice of God calling her to service, and several years afterward she decided that she was meant to be a nurse. Despite the objections of her wealthy parents, she embarked upon a career in public health, in spite of the fact that nursing at the time was a disreputable profession filled with prostitutes and worse.

Nurses Offered Their Service During British Crimean War

World fame came to her when she and 38 other nurses offered their services to the Bristish army in the Crimean War of 1854.  Overcoming the initial suspicion of the troops, sometimes working as long as 24 hours a day, she became venerated as Florence Nightingale, Lady with the Lamp because she unfailingly made rounds of the wards each night to check on her patients.  When the Lady with the Lamp died on August 13, 1910, aged ninety, she was buried in the family plot in a small country churchyard in Hampshire, in a private service in which 6 Bristish soldiers carried her coffin to the grave.

Don’t Hang Back…Begin! 

Sometimes recognition comes slowly or even after you have left this world. What a lasting work this woman began. Whether she started by caring for the prostitutes or throw-away people….she started. She didn’t wait and hope to be ‘good enough’ some day. Florence started with what she had…a love and desire to care for those who could not physically care for themselves. If you have something you’ve been drawn to do, then begin. You can have all the education ever offered on the subject, but unless you put to use what you have…it’s useless.

Thank you nurses all over the world. Thank you for the time and care you invest in each life you touch.

taken from The Henry Hold Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson