Who's Florence Nightingale? More Than Just The Lady With The Lamp

I'm sure you've heard of Florence Nightingale, the 'Lady With The Lamp'. But who's Florence Nightingale really?

Florence Nightingale may not have been a scientist but she did incredible things that are still impacting your life today. Her legacy will always be remembered and is especially important in the time of quarantine. She was a pioneer of her time, insisting on handwashing and keeping the hospital clean as possible to stop the spread of diseases. But let's learn a little bit more about the great Florence Nightingale.

Who's Florence Nightingale: The "Lady With The Lamp"

The "Lady with the Lamp" was often caught at night strolling the empty corridors to console the tormented souls that lay in the hospital beds. It was the 19th century, before antibiotics, before modern medicine. For many, these hospital beds would be their final resting place.

Surrounded not by loved ones, but by the horrible stench of rotting flesh, hearing the moans of the wounded, and the taste of death permeating the air. The "Lady with the Lamp", the "Angel of Crimea", was not only a beacon of life and comfort to the dying men but a pioneer. Forever changing nursing, hospitals, and public health.

She was born to a wealthy family in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820.

Happy 200th Birthday, Florence!

This girl lived to be 90 years old and never married, in a time where that was her only job as a woman! Talk about independence! Shy and never grasping for attention, Florence was a born philanthropist believing God put her on this earth to save people and become a nurse.

Much of her fame stems from the work she did during the Crimean war. Florence gathered a team of nurses and traveled to Scutari, the British-based hospital in Constantinople. When they arrived, Nightingale was appalled by what she saw.

The hospital was built on top of a cesspool. Soldiers lay in agony in their own waste waiting to die. If their wounds weren’t bad enough to kill them, the heavily contaminated water might. It was a breeding ground for pathogens, a purgatory to death.

Florence estimated 40% of soldiers who came to the hospital died. They laid in misery and agony waiting for the end to come. In many cases, it wasn't any better than to just wait to die in the field where you were wounded. Because the hospitals were often extremely dirty, it wasn't uncommon for soldiers to even do worse in hospitals due to infected wounds.

She believed the majority of the deaths were unnecessary, caused not by the war but by the unsanitary conditions rampant in the hospital.

This may seem obvious to us now but this was a fairly novel idea at the time. She instructed her nurses to scrub every inch of the hospital.

It was a long and arduous process. For days the nurses scrubbed and cleaned and none were really sure if all this work was going to amount to anything. But then when the task was complete they looked back at the numbers.

Death rates dropped, morale rose, the hospital became a place to go to heal, not to die. Nightingale once wrote:

“always have chlorinated soda for nurses to wash their hands, especially after dressing or handling a suspicious case. It may destroy germs at the expense of the cuticle, but if it takes off the cuticle, it must be bad for the germs.” So this whole hand washing thing worked 200 years ago....maybe it can work for COVID-19 too...

Before she was 40, Queen Victoria bestowed Florence the “Nightingale Jewel” and a monetary award ($250,000) for her achievements. And Florence, being the philanthropist that she was, used it to build the St. Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.

The Statistician

As a scientist, she took diligent records which she published. These publications fundamentally changed nursing and hospital procedures. She not only wrote about sanitation but also on the importance of ventilation, diet, and hygiene on the patient's health.

A lesser-known fact about Florence was her statistical prowess. She was the first to use coxcomb pie charts. She was not only the "lady with the lamp", "the angel of Crimea", she was also the "lady with the data visualization".

She looked at deaths within the hospital and categorized fatalities into death by battle or death by disease. Her conclusion showed that disease within the hospital caused 10x as many deaths as the war.

In 1858, her statistical ingenuity was awarded by becoming the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Statistical Society. And in 1874, she also became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Florence contracted Crimean fever caused by the bacterium Brucellosis. She probably also suffered from PTSD and some other psychological ailments. However, it can be hard to diagnose someone so far after they have died. This caused her (or gave this shy girl the excuse) to be bedridden, for the majority of her life.

Honoring Florence Nightingale Today

Florence's 200th birthday was on 5/12/2020 and there are many ways you can honor her on her bicentennial and beyond!

1.) Visit and donate to the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. It is housed where the original nursing school used to be.

I went there in 2019. The exhibit was so interactive and immersive. I really wish I had more time to spend in this little museum. It was one of my favorite all-time museums! The gift shop, which is also small and packed with information has many great and quirky gifts like gummy body parts!

You could really tell the people that work and maintain that museum is truly passionate about sharing Florence Nightingale's legacy with the world. It may be small but it is well worth the trip!

2.) Wash your hands and wear your mask! Pictures below show the benefit of handwashing!

*note you don't need to scrub away your cuticle anymore to make Florence happy!

3.) Show compassion for everyone!