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Women in Medicine: The Life and Legacy of Florence Nightingale by: Quincy Lee
On May 12th 1820 in Florence, Italy, a woman who would revolutionize medicine was born. Named after her place of birth, Florence Nightingale was born into a prominent British family and raised in England where she received a classical education. From a young age, Nightingale had an affinity for helping others and she frequently administered care to the less fortunate populations of the village beside her family’s estate (Selanders 2020). Despite her obvious calling for nursing, Nightingale’s father forbid her from becoming a nurse because at the time, women of her social status were expected to marry well and never enter the workforce. Still, Nightingale was a headstrong and independent woman who ignored the objections of her society and enrolled in nursing school in 1844 after turning down several suitable proposals. Upon completing school, she entered the workforce and was quickly promoted to a leadership position in the hospital on account of her skill as a nurse. In the year 1853, the Crimean War broke out as the British fought Russia for control of the Ottoman Empire. During this time, British military forces were sent to the region by the thousands but by 1854 over 18,000 soldiers had been admitted into military hospitals that had no female workers on staff because nurses —-and women in general—were believed to be unsuitable for wartime efforts. This social opinion changed when the desperate British Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert, contacted Florence Nightingale in late 1854 asking that she assemble a group of nurses to attend the soldiers in Crimea, a request to which Nightingale dutifully complied as she quickly recruited a team of 38 nurses and sailed to the British base hospital in Constantinople within a week (history.com).
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