Florence Nightingale summary

You’ve probably heard of Florence Nightingale. She was, after all, one of the most famous figures of the Victorian era. You might even know that she was a nurse. But what exactly made this woman so remarkable? 

Briefly put, Florence Nightingale was devoutly committed to lessening the suffering of others. This was the single goal that guided her life, and she pursued it tirelessly, selflessly, and tenaciously until the day she died.

Over the course of her life, she not only nursed countless patients back to health. She revolutionized the entire field of nursing, giving a good name to what had previously been a disreputable profession and inspiring generations of nurses to come.

These blinks tell her story.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

• what conditions were like on nineteenth-century battlefields;
• how nurses were regarded in Victorian England; and
• why Florence Nightingale is credited as an innovator in the field of statistics.

More than anything, Florence wanted to be worthy of God – at least worthy enough that He would reveal how she could possibly be of service to Him. More and more, she saw her fondness for beautiful clothes and socializing as temptations to be avoided. And Parthe increasingly felt as though she were losing a sister.

Finally, when Florence was in her early twenties, the answer she’d been longing for began to reveal itself. One of the first pieces of this puzzle came from Baron von Bunsen, a family friend who’d recently been appointed ambassador of Prussia. Florence sought his advice because she wanted to alleviate suffering. She wanted to assist the “helpless and miserable.” Bunsen told her about a place called Kaiserswerth. Located in Germany along the Rhine, Kaiserswerth was a long-standing institution that helped orphaned children and trained women to nurse the sick and poor.

At the time, Florence didn’t know how important Kaiserswerth would become to her. In fact, it would be another six years before she would visit the institution. But two years after her discussion with Bunsen, Florence began taking care of her ailing grandmother, Mrs. Shore. She also began attending to the family nursemaid, Mrs. Gale, when she, too, fell ill. Her grandmother recovered; Mrs. Gale did not. Florence was holding her hand when she died. In one of her many private notes, Florence wrote that by the spring of 1844, when she was 24, her path was finally clear to her. Working to help comfort and heal the sick was her calling. 

Parthe and Fanny disliked this news. At the time, nursing was far from a respectable profession, especially for someone of Florence’s social standing. To put it mildly, nurses were notorious for being promiscuous heavy drinkers. In fact, it was not uncommon for a nurse also to also be a sex worker. The role of nurse as we know it today simply did not exist. Nurses were not regarded as responsible health-care professionals who administered drugs or provided medical care. They lived in hospital wards and cooked their own meager meals. Being unsupervised, they often got drunk and slept with doctors or patients. In addition, hospitals were not the clean, orderly facilities of today’s Western world. They were dirty, unsanitary places where disease ran rampant. They were mostly populated by poor, sick tenement dwellers. Hospitals were certainly no place for a respectable woman.

Florence’s mother refused her request to become a nurse. She wouldn’t hear of her daughter setting foot in any of London’s filthy hospitals. Parthe, too, was distressed at her sister’s new obsession. As a result, Florence was miserable. Knowing her calling and not being able to follow it was perhaps worse than not knowing what it was at all. So deep was her despair that at times she longed to die, for she saw no end to the torment of being under her mother’s thumb. But she would not give up on her vocation.

Fortunately, Florence had sympathetic family and friends who could see how passionate and dedicated she was. Lord Ashley, who would later become the famous social reformer Lord Shaftesbury, was one such friend. In 1846, he recommended that Florence at least read about hospitals and public health, even if she couldn’t care for the sick herself. 

It was thus that Florence Nightingale became an expert in hospital care before her career even started. She devoured all the written material on public health that she could find. She got into the habit of waking up before sunrise and filling numerous notebooks with facts, data, and detailed information. She compared numbers, and tabulated and indexed findings. Ravenous for information, she wrote to officials in France, Germany, and Italy to get more data on public health in those countries. She was on her way to becoming one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject of public health in all of Europe – all without her family knowing a thing about it.

Still, studying was not doing. She remained deeply unhappy for long stretches of time. As she put it in a private note from 1847, “I see nothing desirable but death.” Indeed, if suicide had not been considered a mortal sin for any Christian, she might not have survived the many years in which she was kept from pursing her dream. Her depression made her ill to the point of being bedridden. 

Only friends and travel provided relief. In the autumn of 1847, the Nightingales traveled through France to Italy, where Florence got to visit Rome. She was overjoyed – perhaps most of all by the sight of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It was in Rome that Florence grew close to Sidney Herbert and his wife, Liz. The Herberts were another wealthy English family, and Sidney was already on his way to a successful political career, though he preferred to put his power toward philanthropic ends that included social work and establishing convalescent homes. Naturally, it wasn’t long before Sidney Herbert discovered that Florence Nightingale not only shared an interest in such matters but, thanks to her years of study, was an expert in them.

Fanny, Florence’s mother, also adored the Herberts – so much so that when they fully supported Florence’s desire to go to the Kaiserswerth Institute in Germany, she could hardly protest. Unfortunately, in 1848, fate intervened; Germany was in the midst of political turmoil and travel was impossible. 

Misery returned. Florence fell into trances. Her mind would wander and great chunks of time would slip away. One of her most promising suitors, the dashingly handsome and fiendishly clever Richard Monckton Miles, tried once more to win Florence’s hand in marriage, but she declined. Fanny was apoplectic. She believed her daughter to be spiteful and ungrateful. But Florence would not have her calling derailed by any man, no matter how charming she found him to be.

Something had to give. The year 1849 was particularly dreadful for Florence. She felt her life slipping away from her, and she regularly prayed to God for mercy. Meanwhile, the distance between her and Parthe was growing ever wider, and her resentment toward her mother was deepening. 

Finally, another family friend, Selina Bracebridge, felt the need to step in. At the start of 1850, the Bracebridges were planning a trip to Egypt, and they were able to convince Fanny to let Florence come along. And at the end of the trip, Selina chose a route home that happened to take Florence through Germany – and to the Kaiserswerth Institute.

After arriving in Berlin, Florence visited some local hospitals and charity wards. As she described it, “All at once I felt how rich life was.” She then spent two weeks at Kaiserswerth, where she inspected the facilities and helped with the orphans. She returned to England feeling renewed and newly determined.

Her mother, as expected, was furious. Fanny would hear no word of the trip to Kaiserswerth. As well, Florence was to spend six months at her sister’s side, healing a relationship that was reaching its breaking point. Florence served out this sentence, but emerged just as emboldened as ever. She would return to Kaiserswerth. And she would have the backing of the Herberts, the Bracebridges, and the Bunsens. Neither Fanny nor Parthe could hold her back. 

In the summer of 1851, Florence traveled to Germany with Parthe and Fanny, though neither was happy about Florence’s plans – they were to stay at a spa in Carlsbad while Florence trained at Kaiserswerth. This time she worked in the hospital as well as with the children. She observed operations, including an amputation, and the pastor in charge gave her a glowing assessment. The Herberts visited her during her final days there and met with the pastor, who exclaimed that “No person had ever passed so distinguished an examination.” Yet Fanny and Parthe maintained their resentment, which was now evolving into a sort of mania. As far as Parthe was concerned, Florence’s behavior was killing her.

At this point, Florence, now over 30, did what she believed she must do and separated herself from her family. She tried one last time to get her family to understand her choices, but it was no use. And at this time, more opportunities were presenting themselves to Florence. Through Liz Herbert, she was recommended for the post of superintendent at the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances, and was accepted in that position. Parthe fell into hysterics at the news. But such protests were of little use now. Florence was finally embarking on a real career.

By the start of 1854, Florence Nightingale was finally in her element. She’d visited hospitals in Ireland, trained with the Sisters of Charity in Paris, and was now fully engaged with the reorganization of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen, which was proving to be a challenge on many fronts. An inept committee dealt with the Institution’s finances, and was at odds with the administration of the place. Nightingale found herself square in the middle of battles such as requests from the committee that the Institution not accept Catholic patients. But, to the surprise of perhaps everyone there, Nightingale was more than up to the task of managing whatever situation presented itself.

Over the second half of 1853, she not only organized the facility’s staff; she straightened out the accounts and got supplies in order. She was ecstatic. Of course, she wasn’t happy to focus on the Institution alone. At the start of 1854, she began visiting hospitals, taking notes on the conditions there, especially as they related to nurses, and passing this information along to Sidney Herbert. Through Herbert, the prospect of hospital reform seemed a possibility. He was genuinely interested in taking Nightingale's ideas and pushing them forward, making hospitals better and safer places to work.

But Nightingale’s plans to launch a campaign for hospital reform in England would have to wait. War was brewing. In March 1854, England and France declared war on Russia, and by September of that year, Crimea was taking shape as the battleground. As fate would have it, none other than Sidney Herbert had recently been appointed Secretary at War, meaning he was in charge of medical treatment facilities for the British army. In the first weeks of October 1854, this became a huge scandal, as reports from the Times detailed horrific scenes of the British army utterly unprepared to treat its wounded soldiers, with some lying helpless for days without any medical attention.

Indeed, a perfect storm of bad decisions had quickly turned the Crimean War into a nightmare for the British army. One of the main problems was organization and administration. In addition to the role of Secretary at War, there was also a Secretary for War, who controlled the army’s finances. Getting anything done was a bureaucratic obstacle course that led to entangled communications and, ultimately, wounded soldiers dying needlessly from poor care.

Sidney Herbert was just as shocked as the rest of the public when the Times reports hit newsstands. Officially, military heads were denying that anything was wrong, but Herbert took action. He did two things: first, he arranged an open account for the British ambassador in Constantinople for the purchase of any necessary hospital supplies. And second, he wrote to Florence Nightingale, asking her to lead a group of nurses to the battlefront to help relieve the crisis. 

Florence Nightingale agreed to Sidney Herbert’s request. She was keenly aware of the attention her presence in Crimea would draw, and, if she were successful, the progress it could mean in changing public perceptions regarding the field of nursing. She was officially designated Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey. No other British woman had received such a distinction before. 

It was agreed that Nightingale’s party would comprise 40 nurses. Herbert was hoping for more, but Nightingale knew that finding even 40 women who were capable and fit for the task would be a remarkable accomplishment. She also felt that it would be impossible to supervise more than 40 effectively. What’s more, these women had to be found fast! Ultimately, after interviews were conducted and other charitable organizations contacted, only 38 suitable women were found. With their uniforms in order, the women set sail on October 21, 1854. Their destination was Scutari, located across from Constantinople, on the other side of the Bosphorus strait. There, a Turkish army barracks had been converted into a hospital. They arrived in early November, and discovered that the situation was much worse than they’d imagined.

The massive, looming building that housed the injured soldiers at Scutari was a sanitation nightmare. The first thing that everyone noticed was the stench. For some people, the smell of the hospital alone produced sickness and diarrhea. There was hardly any clean water, and little food. Thousands of men in desperate agony were strewn everywhere, many lying on floors in pools of their own fluids with no bedding or blankets to protect them from the cold, let alone from the vermin lurking everywhere. There was no furniture, no operating tables, no medical supplies. It was hopeless – and the wounded continued to arrive. 

It soon became clear to Nightingale that the majority of lives being lost to the Crimean War weren’t due to wounds sustained in battle. They were due, rather, to the lack of care at the Scutari hospital, as well as myriad infections and diseases. Much of the crisis in the overflowing hospitals stemmed from the bureaucracy at the heart of the British military system. Three departments oversaw the hospitals: the Medical Department, the Purveyor’s Department, and the Commissariat. Getting something as simple as clean blankets sent to the Barrack Hospital required the coordination of all three, as well as a confusing amount of paperwork. 

Nightingale wanted to help, but it took days before her nurses were allowed to do anything at all. The army doctors were not happy to see them. Remember, nurses had a bad reputation at the time. If anything, the doctors believed they’d add to the troubles. Although some nurses wanted to jump into the fray immediately, Nightingale knew that they must win the trust of the doctors before they started doing anything. If the nurses began by defying the doctors, their mission would be over before it began. 

Nightingale and her fellow nurses sat by patiently while waiting for a chance to win over the army doctors. In the meantime, she got her nurses mending old linen and itemizing what few supplies they could find. Nightingale herself was able to make some progress in the kitchen. On the way over, she’d made some purchases in Constantinople with her own money. This included portable stoves, arrowroot, wine, and beef essences. On their third day at Scutari, they were able to get the doctor’s approval to make a dish for the soldiers: hot arrowroot and port wine. For months to come, this would be some of the only food served at Scutari.

Then, on November 9, 1854, the situation reached a new extreme. After a brutal fight in the key battleground of Sebastopol, the sick and wounded came flooding down to Scutari. Finally, the nurses were given orders to help with the patients. Now was their chance to prove their worth and make the first steps toward changing history.

Nightingale didn’t waste any time. She knew that it wasn’t battlefield injuries that were killing British soldiers. The main culprits were dysentery, cholera, scurvy, starvation, exposure, diarrhea, and rheumatic fever. So Nightingale and her nurses set about making a functional system to improve sanitary conditions at the Scutari hospital.

They proved their worth very quickly. The army doctors immediately saw that the Nightingale nurses could not only care for the patients – they could dress wounds better than most of the army medical staff. Nightingale herself even became a conduit between the facility and the purveyor’s store. If things were lacking, she ordered them to be purchased in Constantinople and established her own carefully monitored supply store. Everything was accounted for in great detail, and nothing was used without authorization. The doctors’ initial suspicions gave way to admiration.

She then organized much-needed repairs to the facility. Local workers were hired to unblock the drains, install a water pump, and repair a wing of the building that had been damaged by fire. This not only gave the facility working lavatories and bathtubs; it also created space for hundreds of additional beds.

All the while, she was documenting every last detail and sending regular reports and recommendations back to Sidney Herbert. Her work was not going unnoticed. Even Queen Victoria read about her every triumph and setback.

Even in the face of adversity, Florence Nightingale managed to continue improving the conditions in Britain’s army hospitals. Her suggestions on the types of supplies and furniture needed, and on everything from locked cabinets to sanitary conditions, were eventually heeded. She taught the officers that soldiers should not be treated as “drunken brutes.” She advocated providing patients with reading and game rooms. This would help them drink less – and heal more quickly.

While Nightingale was tough and uncompromising in her ideals, survivors of the war would never forget the tender care that she and her nurses provided. According to wartime tales, the soldiers even took comfort in her shadow, which would fall upon their pillows as Nightingale, lantern in hand, made her nighttime rounds. She worked endlessly during these years. In fact, she rarely slept at all. When she wasn’t tending to patients, she was recording every detail and sending out countless letters and reports. 

Nightingale also helped transform the nursing profession’s bad reputation. News of her tireless efforts captivated the British public and helped put nurses in a noble light. No longer were they perceived as drunken, lascivious women. They were like the “Lady with the Lamp,” there to ease suffering and bring comfort.

But Nightingale herself wanted none of the fame that her work brought. When the war finally ended and the last patients had been attended to, there were numerous offers to give Nightingale a hero’s welcome home. Towns wanted to give her parades, and various ceremonies were proposed, but she declined them all. When she traveled home, she did so under an assumed name. Few people knew what she really looked like. All they had to go by were illustrations in newspapers. Eventually, she made her way back to her family’s Hampshire estate, walking down the garden path alone.

One phrase appeared over and over in Nightingale’s notes after she returned home: “I can never forget.” Rather than sitting back and resting on her laurels, she could think only of the lives she had been unable to save. Her friends and family implored her to rest, but she could do no such thing. She felt that the needless deaths she had witnessed must not be in vain. She resolved to use whatever power she’d gained to push for reform so that no other soldier would have to suffer like that again.

As it turned out, Florence Nightingale retained a considerable amount of power after her return from Crimea. Queen Victoria was entirely impressed with her when the two finally met face to face. Nightingale had the rare ability to be captivating and persuasive without seeming immodest. After speaking to Nightingale, the queen felt compelled to launch a Royal Commission to investigate the circumstances that caused the many casualties of the Crimean War. 

Eventually, Nightingale became deeply involved in improving conditions for soldiers in India as well. But she was never going to limit her attention to the military. She was a major force driving hospital and sanitation reform in general. She even founded her own school to train nurses. And she did it all without making a single public appearance.

Remarkably, even though she often suffered from bouts of physical and mental collapse, Nightingale lived much longer than she’d expected to live. She continued to push for reform and forged alliances within many governments over the years. Everyone who came to call – whether they were doctors, lords, bureaucrats, or the Crown Princess of Prussia – was impressed by the vitality of Florence Nightingale.

As she got older, her intensity finally diminished, at least enough for her to find some satisfaction in what she’d accomplished. For the longest time, she could only fret over what hadn’t been done. Half measures were failures. Getting only a portion of a health reform bill passed was a sorrowful defeat that could send her spiraling into a fit of depression. But eventually, in her later years, she grew warmer, and went easier on both herself and others. She outlived her mother, father, and sister. And despite the many ups and downs she had with her family, she was able to find some peace and understanding with them before they died.

Because of all Nightingale did to change the role of the nurse, modernize hospitals, raise public awareness around sanitation, and improve treatment of soldiers, there were many calls to lionize her during her lifetime. But she always refused. Even when she finally did die, at the age of 90, she expressly requested a quiet burial and a headstone bearing only her initials, the year of her birth, and the year of her death. And so there is a modest cross in the family plot in East Wellow that reads, “F. N. Born 1820. Died 1910.”