I was attributed with being the founder of modern nursing. I was born in Florence, Italy, in May of 1820 to wealthy English parents while they were on honeymoon. I am the younger of my parents two children with my older sibling being my sister Parthenope. My mother always wanted me to follow in her footsteps and follow the social "norms" as in be a socially respectable woman. I was supposed to go to all the parties and marry young just like my mother and sister; I however didn't find that future too appealing.
While growing up I studied under my father, a respectable Cambridge scholar, as well as many of my nannies. I learned seven languages in my youth and wrote an autobiography by the age of ten. During my time, nursing was looked at as a non-respectable profession. Prostitutes, women who were drunk in public and homeless women were the "nurses" of my time. I wanted a change. I felt that people's lives were worth more than just an afterthought for the laywomen of the time. So, against my mother's wishes, I began to study nursing, going as far as Germany to do so. When I returned home from Germany, I was put in charge of the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen on Harley Street in London until the Crimean war began.
The Crimean War was fought in Turkey with the Russians in the year 1853. There was a horrid war hospital in Turkey that a few other nurses and myself went to assist in saving the lives of thousands of patients. There was over two times the amount of patients in that hospital than was the said capacity. When I arrived there was a fatality rate of over 60%. My fellow nurses and I brought that down to 1%.
I believe that because I wrote my book "Notes on Nursing" it is going to help change the face of nursing for the future. I hope that one day people will think of nursing as more of a "calling" than a "job".
--Florence Nightingale
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