Nightingale

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Florence Nightingale

Illustration of nightingale Noun In the meaning defined above. Examples of nightingale in a Sentence Recent Examples on the Web: Noun The nightingale sang just before midnight, as if it were perched in the boughs of the dripping tree in the car park. Birdwatching Tips From the Renaissance," 13 Apr. First Known Use of nightingale Noun 13th century, in the meaning defined above. Learn More about nightingale. Later in life, she kept up a prolonged correspondence with Irish nun Sister Mary Clare Moore, with whom she had worked in Crimea.

Some scholars of Nightingale's life believe that she remained chaste for her entire life, perhaps because she felt a religious calling to her career. On 13 August , at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street , Mayfair , London. Florence Nightingale exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutelage of her father.

While taken for granted now, it was at the time a relatively novel method of presenting data.

Indeed, Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram , [56] or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram , equivalent to a modern circular histogram , to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term would frequently be used for the individual diagrams. In , Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society.

Her attention turned to the health of the British army in India and she demonstrated that bad drainage, contaminated water, overcrowding and poor ventilation were causing the high death rate. Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In and , she successfully lobbied for the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Indian situation. Two years later, she provided a report to the commission, which completed its own study in The Royal Sanitary Commission of —9 presented Nightingale with an opportunity to press for compulsory sanitation in private houses.

She lobbied the minister responsible, James Stansfeld , to strengthen the proposed Public Health Bill to require owners of existing properties to pay for connection to mains drainage. At the same time she combined with the retired sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick to persuade Stansfeld to devolve powers to enforce the law to Local Authorities, eliminating central control by medical technocrats.

Historians now believe that both drainage and devolved enforcement played a crucial role in increasing average national life expectancy by 20 years between and the mids during which time medical science made no impact on the most fatal epidemic diseases. Historian of science I. Lytton Strachey was famous for his book debunking 19th century heroes, Eminent Victorians Nightingale gets a full chapter, but instead of debunking her, Strachey praised her in a way that raised her national reputation and made her an icon for English feminists of the s and s.

While better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism. She wrote some books, pamphlets and articles throughout her life. As she sorted out her thoughts, she wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.

This was an page, three-volume work, which Nightingale had printed privately in , but which until recently was never published in its entirety. Strachey included it in The Cause , a history of the women's movement. Apparently, the writing served its original purpose of sorting out thoughts; Nightingale left soon after to train at the Institute for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth.

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She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra 's. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who served as a priestess in the temple of Apollo during the Trojan War. The god gave her the gift of prophecy ; when she refused his advances, he cursed her so that her prophetic warnings would go unheeded.

Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf. In the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor wrote "Welcome Eumenides," a poem written in Nightingale's voice and quoting frequently from Nightingale's writings. Eleanor Taylor has brought together the waste of women in society and the waste of men in wars and twisted them inseparably. Despite being named as a Unitarian in several older sources, Nightingale's own rare references to conventional Unitarianism are mildly negative.

She remained in the Church of England throughout her life, albeit with unorthodox views. Influenced from an early age by the Wesleyan tradition , Nightingale felt that genuine religion should manifest in active care and love for others. Suggestions for Thought , her own theodicy , which develops her heterodox ideas. Nightingale questioned the goodness of a God who would condemn souls to hell, and was a believer in universal reconciliation — the concept that even those who die without being saved will eventually make it to Heaven.

For example, a dying young prostitute being tended by Nightingale was concerned she was going to hell, and said to her "Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time". The nurse replied "Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to?

Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or can ever imagine. Despite her intense personal devotion to Christ, Nightingale believed for much of her life that the pagan and eastern religions had also contained genuine revelation. She was a strong opponent of discrimination both against Christians of different denominations, and against those of non-Christian religions.

Nightingale believed religion helped provide people with the fortitude for arduous good work, and would ensure the nurses in her care attended religious services. However she was often critical of organised religion. She disliked the role the 19th century Church of England would sometimes play in worsening the oppression of the poor. Nightingale argued that secular hospitals usually provided better care than their religious counterparts. While she held that the ideal health professional should be inspired by a religious as well as professional motive, she said that in practice many religiously motivated health workers were concerned chiefly in securing their own salvation, and that this motivation was inferior to the professional desire to deliver the best possible care.

Nightingale's lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession.

Nightingale

In , the International Committee of the Red Cross instituted the Florence Nightingale Medal , which is awarded every two years to nurses or nursing aides for outstanding service. The Nightingale Pledge is a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath which nurses recite at their pinning ceremony at the end of training.

Created in and named after Nightingale as the founder of modern nursing, the pledge is a statement of the ethics and principles of the nursing profession. NIGH also works to rekindle awareness about the important issues highlighted by Florence Nightingale, such as preventive medicine and holistic health.

As of , the Florence Nightingale Declaration has been signed by over 25, signatories from countries. During the Vietnam War , Nightingale inspired many US Army nurses, sparking a renewal of interest in her life and work. Her admirers include Country Joe of Country Joe and the Fish , who has assembled an extensive website in her honour.

The Agostino Gemelli Medical School [87] in Rome, the first university-based hospital in Italy and one of its most respected medical centres, honoured Nightingale's contribution to the nursing profession by giving the name "Bedside Florence" to a wireless computer system it developed to assist nursing. Four hospitals in Istanbul are named after Nightingale: An appeal is being considered for the former Derbyshire Royal Infirmary hospital in Derby, England to be named after Nightingale.

The area in which the hospital lies in Derby has recently been referred to as the "Nightingale Quarter". A pub named after her stands close to the DRI. A stained glass window was commissioned for inclusion in the DRI chapel in the late s. When the chapel was demolished the window was removed and installed in the replacement chapel. At the closure of the DRI the window was again removed and stored.

The work features nine panels, of the original ten, depicting scenes of hospital life, Derby townscapes and Nightingale herself. Some of the work was damaged and the tenth panel was dismantled for the glass to be used in repair of the remaining panels.

All the figures, who are said to be modelled on prominent Derby town figures of the early sixties, surround and praise a central pane of the triumphant Christ. A nurse who posed for the top right panel in attended the rededication service in October Upon the centenary of Nightingale's death in , and to commemorate her connection with Malvern , the Malvern Museum held a Florence Nightingale exhibit [95] with a school poster competition to promote some events.

When Nightingale moved on to the Crimea itself in May , she often travelled on horseback to make hospital inspections. She later transferred to a mule cart and was reported to have escaped serious injury when the cart was toppled in an accident. Following this, she used a solid Russian-built carriage, with a waterproof hood and curtains. The carriage was returned to England by Alexis Soyer after the war and subsequently given to the Nightingale training school.

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The carriage was damaged when the hospital was bombed during the Second World War. Florence Nightingale's voice was saved for posterity in a phonograph recording from preserved in the British Library Sound Archive. The recording, made in aid of the Light Brigade Relief Fund and available to hear online, says:.

When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore.

It did not portray her as an entirely sympathetic character and draws much characterisation from Lytton Strachey 's biography of her in Eminent Victorians. In , a stage musical play representation of Nightingale entitled The Voyage of the Lass was produced by the Association of Nursing Service Administrators of the Philippines. In , a biographical silent film titled The Victoria Cross , starring Julia Swayne Gordon as Nightingale, was released, followed in by another silent film, Florence Nightingale , featuring Elisabeth Risdon.

Portrayals of Nightingale on television, in documentary as in fiction, vary — the BBC's Florence Nightingale , featuring Laura Fraser , emphasised her independence and feeling of religious calling, but in Channel 4's Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea , she is portrayed as narrow-minded and opposed to Seacole's efforts. As well as a standing portrait, she was depicted on the notes in a field hospital, holding her lamp. Nightingale had a principled objection to having photographs taken or her portrait painted.

An extremely rare photograph of her, taken at Embley on a visit to her family home in May , was discovered in and is now at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. The first biography of Nightingale was published in England in In , Edward Tyas Cook was authorised by Nightingale's executors to write the official life, published in two volumes in Nightingale was also the subject of one of Lytton Strachey 's four mercilessly provocative biographical essays, Eminent Victorians.

Strachey regarded Nightingale as an intense, driven woman who was both personally intolerable and admirable in her achievements. Cecil Woodham-Smith , like Strachey, relied heavily on Cook's Life in her biography, though she did have access to new family material preserved at Claydon. In , Mark Bostridge published a major new life of Nightingale, almost exclusively based on unpublished material from the Verney Collections at Claydon and from archival documents from about archives around the world, some of which had been published by Lynn McDonald in her projected sixteen-volume edition of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale to date.

Several churches in the Anglican Communion commemorate Nightingale with a feast day on their liturgical calendars. Washington National Cathedral celebrates Nightingale's accomplishments with a double-lancet stained glass window featuring six scenes from her life, designed by artist Joseph G. Reynolds and installed in A tinted lithograph by William Simpson illustrating conditions of the sick and injured in Balaklava. Nightingale's moccasins that she wore in the Crimean War. A ward of the hospital at Scutari where Nightingale worked, from an lithograph by William Simpson.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Florence Nightingale disambiguation. For the film, see The Lady with a Lamp. Recorded to wax cylinder on 30 July , to raise money for veterans of the Charge of the Light Brigade. Retrieved 6 July First published London, Nightingale, Florence; McDonald, Lynn Biblical Annotations, Sermons and Journal Notes".

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Leiothrix , genus of birds of the babbler family Timaliidae order Passeriformes , with two species: Both range from the Himalayas to Indochina; L. Canaries Serinus canaria were brought to Europe from their native Canary Islands in the 16th century and have since been developed into many varieties…. Nightingale thrush , any of 11 species of thrushes of the New World genus Catharus family Turdidae.

They are of slender build and have rather drab plumage and rich songs—qualities reminiscent of the European nightingale. In some tropical species, the eye rims, bill, and legs are orange, and the underparts are…. Mockingbird , any of several versatile songbirds of the New World family Mimidae order Passeriformes. The common, or northern, mockingbird Mimus polyglottos is well known as a mimic; it has been known to imitate the songs of 20 or more species within 10 minutes.

It is 27 cm Aesthetic and economic importance.

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