Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a pioneering British nurse, social reformer, and statistician who is considered the founder of modern nursing. She established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital in London in 1860. During the Crimean War, Nightingale and her team of nurses greatly reduced mortality rates among soldiers in British army hospitals in Turkey through their emphasis on hygiene, sanitation, and statistical analysis. Though she contracted brucellosis during the war and was bedridden for the rest of her life, Nightingale continued her work as a reformer and writer to improve healthcare standards.

1. ( B I O G R A P H Y )
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

2. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
 Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), known as “The
Lady With the Lamp,” was a British nurse, social
reformer and statistician best known as the founder
of modern nursing.
 Her experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War
were foundational in her views about sanitation.
 She established St. Thomas’ Hospital and the
Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860.
 Her efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced
the quality of care in the 19th and 20th centuries.

3. EARLY LIFE:
 Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820.
 From a very young age, Florence Nightingale was
active in philanthropy, ministering to the ill and poor
people in the village neighboring her family’s estate.
 By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her
that nursing was her calling. She believed it to be her
divine purpose.
 Determined to pursue her true calling despite her
parents’ objections, in 1844, Nightingale enrolled as
a nursing student at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor
Fliedner in Kaiserwerth, Germany.

4. WAR EFFORTS:
 In October of 1854 Nightingale organized a party of
thirty-eight nurses, mostly from different religious
orders, for service in the Crimean War (1853–56).
 The Barrack Hospital, where Nightingale and her nurses
worked and lived, was built on a massive cesspool (an
underground area into which liquid waste flows), which
poisoned the water and even the building itself.
 By the end of 1854, some order had been created and the
hospital was cleaner—not only through Nightingale's
efforts but also through improvements made by a
governmental sanitary commission.
 The death rate among patients fell by two-thirds.

5. LATER LIFE:
 While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted the
bacterial infection brucellosis, also known as Crimean
fever, and would never fully recover.
 By the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound
and routinely bedridden, and would be so for the
remainder of her life.
 Nightingale continued her work from her bed.
 In 1859, she published Notes on Hospitals, which
focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals.
 In 1907, she was conferred the Order of Merit by King
Edward, and received the Freedom of the City of London.
 In May 1910, she received a celebratory message
from King George on her 90th birthday.

6. DEATH:
 In August 1910, Nightingale fell ill but seemed to
recover and was reportedly in good spirits.
 A week later, on the evening of Friday, August 12,
1910, she developed an array of troubling symptoms.
 She died unexpectedly at around 2 p.m. the
following day, Saturday, August 13, at her home in
London.