Women’s History Month: Honoring the Past & Inspiring the Future, Part 5

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.
– Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy. She is legendary for tons of reasons – including improving conditions at a British base hospital (thus reducing the death count significantly), sparking worldwide healthcare reform through her writings, and establishing St. Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. When Florence initially told her parents, Frances Nightingale and William Shore Nightingale, that she wanted to be a nurse, they forbade her to pursue nursing – especially because they were wealthy and wanted her to marry a rich man, not pursuing a job that, in the Victorian Era, was viewed as lowly.

Despite her parents’ angry objections, she enrolled at the Lutheran Hospital of Pastor Filedner in Kaiserswerth, Germany as a nursing student in 1844. During the Crimean War, Nightingale worked constantly at a British base hospital, earning her the nicknames “the Angel of the Crimea” and “the Lady with the Lamp” (because she made nighttime rounds to tend to patients while carrying a lamp). Using her experiences in the Crimea, she wrote an 830-page report on proposed reforms for military hospitals with poor conditions. Upon coming back home, she was treated as a hero, and the Queen gave her an engraved broach now known as the Nightingale Jewel, along with $250,000.

To this day, she’s still revered as a hero, and that’s why she’s inspirational. She overcame everything life threw at her – from her parents’ disapproval to the terrible conditions of the war hospitals, and returned with grace, charity, and hospitality.  Florence has inspired women in every industry to use their talents to improve their surroundings and to have courage and persevere even against great odds for “very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”