Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910

	Florence Nightingale 1820 – 1910 Florence Nightingale was born in Florence in 1820. During her early life she and her sister were educated by a governess. When she was 16 she came across a Sheep dog that had a broken leg. She helped heal him and this started her thinking. She firmly believed that God had chosen her for a special purpose but she did not know what that purpose was. During the 1840s Florence Nightingale developed an interest in working in a hospital as a nurse. However, her family were firmly against the idea.
Florence, against her family’s wishes began her training as a nurse
In March 1854 Britain, France and Turkey declared war on Russia and the Crimean war began. In September 1854 the Times newspaper published an article about the medical hospitals – they were dirty with rats everywhere. In November 1854, Nightingale arrived in Scutari with 38 nurses.
“Nightingale found the conditions in the army hospital in Scutari appalling. They had no decent facilities. The floors and walls of the hospital were covered with filth; exposed foul-smelling sewers ran beneath the hospital; vermin and rats were everywhere. The water allowance was one pint per head per day for all purposes. She had to use the provisions brought with her. The men were kept in rooms without blankets or food. Men starved to death or perished from putrid food and patients were left to die nearly naked or in ragged uniforms soaked with own blood. Diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery were the main reasons why the death-rate was so high among the wounded soldiers. The doctors were hostile and hesitant in letting the nurses enter the wards.”		The conditions in the hospitals were poor. Injured men frequently had to lie on the floor, which was dirty and alive with vermin. Operations were performed in unhygienic conditions. It is not surprising that more men died from typhus and cholera than from their injuries. Florence set about making the hospitals clean and giving good care to the soldiers as a result she saved thousands of people’s lives. She carried a lamp as she walked the halls of the battlefield hospital and became known as the "lady with the lamp".