Florence Nightingale

NIGHTINGALE, Florence, English Nursing Corps founder, 1820-1910. During the Crimean War, from 1854, she organised nurses and nuns to work in operating theatres and took 38 nurses out there with her. A massive reduction in mortality rates resulted. On arrival she commandeered 200 scrubbing brushes to wash patients’ clothes with (typical of her method of ensuring a hygienic environment). Later Florence founded St Thomas Hospital in London (1860), which had emphasis on a Nursing School. She used donations given to her in recognition of her work in the Crimea. Florence was known as The Lady of the Lamp to the soldiers. In 1860 she wrote the classic  ‘Notes on Nursing’. The first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit, in 1907. Nursing was elevated to an honourable professional status in England mainly as a result of her endeavours. It is not well known that she has been credited with being the first person to use medical statistics, because of her invention of the pie-chart (as now used universally in the presentation of business statistics).

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