SteemSTEM & Utopian.io Meetup in Italy - a window on Florence Nightingale, aka the Lady with the Lamp

As most of you already know, our second steemSTEM Meetup is approaching, during which participants will have a chance to visit the Virgo lab located near Pisa in Italy, as well as to spend some quality time socializing with each other in the beautiful city of Florence. We decided to make a series of posts about prominent people who originated from this city, so that participants will be able to truly appreciate historical significance of Florence.

Florence Nightingale, the "Lady with the Lamp"

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Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy, as a younger child of a wealthy, upper-class British family. She was named by the city of birth, which was pretty much the usual practice during the Pre-Victorian and Victorian era. Her father provided her with a good education in languages (German, French and Italian), mathematics, and history. As a rich landowner's daughter, she was expected to pursue active social life in upper-class circles and to get married, but she was never interested in such a lifestyle. Strong-willed, introverted and religious, she was convinced that God had some other plans for her.

At the age of 24, Florence told to her parents that she wanted to become a nurse. For the rich ladies of that time, something like that was unthinkable, which was understandable considering unsanitary conditions in hospitals of that time (operations were even performed without the use of anaesthetics!). Moreover, nurses were considered to be the women of questionable morals. Despite her parents' objections, she visited several hospitals and health institutions. Finally, she managed to obtain her parents' permission to enrole at a German nursing school for women in Kaiserwerth.

In the early 1850s Florence returned to London where she started a job in the hospital for Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. Shortly her outstanding performance draw the attention of her employer and Nightingale was promoted to superintendant, which was a very challenging position, but at the same time it provided her with the opportunity to implement her own ideas in running the institution.

The Crimean War

Nightingale's most prominent contribution during her life was certainly in the Crimean war, which broke out in October 1853.

The hospitals at the Crimea were in appalling and unsanitary conditions at the time of the war. Having no stationary female nurses made the whole situation worse, resulting in inadequate medical care for the wounded/sick soldiers and horrible sanitary conditions.

One year after the war started, in October 1854, Florence gathered 38 women volunteer nurses that she personally trained and sailed with them to the Crimea, to help thousands of soldiers who were fighting for their lives. When Nightingale arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital in Constantinople, the image she saw was horrifying - more soldiers were dying from infectious diseases that were the result of inappropriate sanitation than from actual injures obtained in the battlefield.

Besides all the hard work she took on the improving the sanitary conditions of the hospital, she put all her efforts in improving the quality of patients' stay in the hospital as well. She established a laundry service so that patients could have clean sheets all the time, and she made sure that patients with special dietary requirements would get appropriate food. Moreover, she considered entertainment and intellectual activities equally important for well being of patients, so she introduced classrooms and a library at the hospital.

While she was checking up on patients during the night, she used to walk down the long hallways of the hospital carrying the lamp in her hand, and would approach every single patient to make sure everyone is doing well. That's how she obtained her nickname The Lady With the Lamp.

Since she obtained an excellent formal education in mathematics, Nightingale calculated the incidence of deaths in the military which could be prevented by improving sanitary conditions. During her work at Scutari hospital, she developed the Polar-Area Diagram to present her results, which later evolved to the pie chart extensively used nowadays. This remarkable approach at the time was actually a pioneer work in the area of measuring particular social phenomena and subjecting it to mathematical analysis.

According to the official statistics, during her year and a half long stay at Scutari, the hospital’s death rate was reduced by two-thirds.

Later achievements

After she returned to England, Nightingale was rewarded by queen Victoria with $250,000 for her amazing contributions and with special engraved brooch which became known as the "Nightingale Jewel". She used the money to establish St. Thomas' Hospital, and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. She was the first woman to be awarded with the Order of Merit in 1907. She died in August 1910, in London, England.

Nightingale's most prominent contributions by which she is remembered are certainly for being a pioneer of nursing and for introducing reforms in hospital sanitation methods. With her outstanding work, the perception of nursing profession has changed, which started to gain more respect and appreciation.

References

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Mo-Ni/Nightingale-Florence.html
https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/nitegale.htm
https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/florence-nightingale
https://www.biography.com/people/florence-nightingale-9423539
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/nightpiechart.htm