BRAVE HEARTS-Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale, 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910), who came to be known as "The Lady with the Lamp", was a pioneering nurse, writer, and noted statistician.Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Inspired by what she took as a Christian divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Florence announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, despite the intense anger and distress of her family, particularly her mother.She cared for people in poverty. Nightingale was courted by politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing. When in Rome in 1847, recovering from a mental breakdown precipitated by a continuing crisis of her relationship with Milnes, she met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845–1846), a position he would hold again during the Crimean War. Herbert was already married, but he and Nightingale were immediately attracted to each other and they became lifelong close friends. Herbert was instrumental in facilitating her pioneering work in the Crimea and in the field of nursing, and she became a key adviser to him in his political career. In 1851, she rejected Milnes' marriage proposal, against her mother's wishes. On 22 August 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick GentlewomenFlorence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On 21 October 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale and including her aunt Mai Smith, were sent (under the authorization of Sidney Herbert) to Turkey, about 545 km across the Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based.She and her nurses found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference.she and her colleagues began by thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and reorganizing patient care. “Within 6 months of her arrival in Scutari, the mortality rate dropped from 42.7 percent to 2.2 percent“During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp",Nightingale moved from her family hometo the Burlington Hotelwhere she was stricken by a fever, probably due to a chronic form of brucellosis ("Crimean fever") that she contracted during the Crimeanwar She barred her mother and sister from her room and rarely left it.Nightingale was considered a pioneer in the concept of medical tourism. Nightingale wrote Notes on Nursing, which was published in 1860, a slim 136-page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established.Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria. In 1907, she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. In 1908, she was given the Honourary Freedom of the City of London.By 1896, Florence Nightingale was bedridden. She may have had what is now known as chronic fatigue syndrome Her birthday is now celebrated as International CFS Awareness Day. On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane