Florence Nightingale: The Lady with the Lamp
Florence Nightingale, born on May 12th, 1820, is widely regarded as the archetype of modern-day nurses. Her journey to greatness began in a privileged household where she received an unprecedented education for a woman of her time. Although her parents were initially hesitant about her decision to become a nurse, Florence pursued her dream and fulfilled a commandment from God to end suffering in the world.
A Woman of Many Complications
Florence Nightingale was a complex woman who was more than just a nurse and feminist. She was a borderline genius who spoke multiple languages and pioneered the concepts of statistical analysis that are still used today. She was a shy and devout Christian who had a strong opinion that women should not vote. Her leadership oversaw a hospital that had the highest death rates in modern history.
Education for Women at Its Earliest
Despite the prevalent view of women’s roles in society at the time, Florence received an exceptional education thanks to her father’s dedication to his daughters. Her mastery of multiple languages such as Latin, Italian, Greek, German, and French, and her knowledge of philosophy and theology, made her a formidable debater.
The Call to Nursing
At the age of 17, Florence had a vision that commanded her to end suffering in the world. She wanted to become a nurse, but her parents disagreed and viewed nursing and prostitution as similar. For over a decade, Florence tried to convince her parents, and when she turned 30, her father finally sent her to Germany for nursing training.
The Crimean War
Florence Nightingale didn’t know that her nursing career would lead her into one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history: the Crimean War. When the war broke out, the British government was against using nurses to care for soldiers, and so the troops received minimal care. When William Howard Russell’s reports about the poor conditions of British military hospitals in the Crimea became public, the government quickly reversed its decision.
Sidney Herbert, the Secretary of State at War, realized he needed a head nurse to lead the nurses in the Crimea, and Florence was his top choice. What she thought would be an opportunity to showcase her capabilities to her parents turned out to be a barrage of endless nightmares. Despite the challenges, Florence Nightingale became a legend and earned the title of “The Lady with the Lamp” for her tireless efforts in tending to the wounded soldiers during the Crimean War.
Although, she pulled off the inevitable and became a Legend and became immortal in the pages of history.
Inspirational Florence Nightingales Quotes and Sayings
1. I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
2. I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.
3. So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
4. Rather, ten times, die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world, than stand idly on the shore.
5. I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions that bring results.
6. You ask me why I do not write something… I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions that bring results.
7. If a nurse declines to do these kinds of things for her patient, ‘because it is not her business’, I should say that nursing was not her calling.
8. The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
9. She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.
10. Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.
11. How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
12. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.
13. The world is put back by the death of everyone who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.
14. Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?
15. To understand God’s thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose.
16. Nursing is a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backward.
17. What cruel mistakes are sometimes made by benevolent men and women in matters of business about which they can know nothing and think they know a great deal.
18. No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this – ‘devoted and obedient’. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.
19. Nature alone cures. … what nursing has to do … is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.
20. Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement they have only tried to be ”men” and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.
21. Woman has nothing but her affections,–and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.
22. What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization, and disorder on the part of the inferior… jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
23. There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain.
24. The craving for ‘the return of the day’, which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light.
25. It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary nevertheless to lay down such a principle …
26. The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sickbed.
27. Women should have the true nurse calling, the good of the sick first the second only the consideration of what is their ‘place’ to do – and that women who want for a housemaid to do this or the charwomen to do that, when the patient is suffering, have not the making of a nurse in them.
28. By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life that produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it.
29. Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better.
30. Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but a sketch.
31. I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet-all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.
32. “In it and in the other prayers of the Mystics there is scarcely a petition. There is never a word of the theory that God’s dealings with us are to show His “power”; still less of the theory
33. For the sick it is important to have the best.
34. That “of His own good pleasure” He has ” predestined” any souls to eternal damnation.”
35. It is very well to say “be prudent, be careful, try to know each other.” But how are you to know each other?
36. Religion is not devotion, but work and suffering for the love of God; this is the true doctrine of Mystics.
37. There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilization at which we have arrived.
38. Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back.
39. Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Remember he is face to face with his enemy all the time.
40. Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take a breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.
41. For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.
42. Remember my name– you’ll be screaming it later.
43. Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended … to take in the whole sick population. May we hope that the day will come … when every poor sick person will have the opportunity of a share in a district sick-nurse at home.
44. It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick that, second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room and that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want.
45. The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe – how to observe – what symptoms indicate improvement – what the reverse – which is of importance – which is of none – which are the evidence of neglect – and of what kind of neglect.
46. The first possibility of rural cleanliness lies in the water supply.
47. People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients are actual means of recovery.
48. The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health, or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.
49. To be a fellow-worker with God is the highest aspiration of which we can conceive man capable.
50. Mankind must make heaven before we can “go to heaven” (as the phrase is), in this world as in any other.
51. Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the body. Much of it is true. But I wish a little more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind.
52. Our first journey is to find that special place for us.
53. Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.
54. Never dispute with anybody who wishes to contradict you, says a most reasonable saint.
55. I stand at the altar of the murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.
56. I did not think of going to give myself a position, but for the sake of common humanity.
57. If you knew how unreasonably sick people suffer from reasonable causes of distress, you would take more pains about all these things.
58. “I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats.”
59. “Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.”
60. “Unnecessary noise is the cruelest absence of care that can be inflicted on the sick or the well.”
Recap
Florence Nightingale dedicated herself to improving healthcare during the Crimean War. The result was a huge reduction in the mortality rates. Her analysis helped shape the public health policies in England. She was a feminist in the time women dared not speak. She fought for equal rights for women.
Her work as well as her life represent the power of a single determined individual who is set on bringing a positive change to society. Florence Nightingale life serves as an inspiration for everyone who is seeking to bring a difference.
