Florence Nightingale(原文完整版)

Florence Nightingale

With the honor of

“The

Lady with the

Lamp”,

Florence Nightingale was the founder of

modern nursing and a famous English social reformer. She devoted all her life to nursing

career and made outstanding contributions to the knowledge and improvement of public

health. On August 13, 1910, she passed away in London forever.

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy on May 12, 1820 and she was name

d after the city of her birth.

Nightingale?s

family was very wealthy and belonged to elite so

cial circles. However, Nightingale preferred to look after poor people rather than dance wi

th people from upper class. In 1837, feeling god was calling her to do some work, Nightin

gale began to develop an interest in nursing. She received no support from her family at t

hat time, because her parents considered nursing to be inappropriate to a woman of her

class. They expected her to marry a good man and lived an upper class

woman?s

life. In

1844, Nightingale decided to work in hospital, which her family furiously resisted. Despite

the intense rage and pressure from her family, she still learned some nursing skills by he

rself sneakily. In 1851, she went to Kaiserwerth in Germany for three

months?

nursing trai

ning. This enabled her to become superintendent of a hospital for gentlewomen in Harley

Street.

In 1853, the Crimean War broke out and it is soon reported that there were desperat

ely lacking medical facilities, drugs and even nurses at the front. Sidney Herbert, the war

minister, had already known Nightingale and asked her to organize a corps of nurses to t

end the wounded soldiers. On 21 October 1854, she and the staff of 38 women volunteer

nurses were sent to the Crimea. Although the conditions there were very horrid, Nighting

ale and her staff did not flinch and confronted it bravely. Nightingale herself spent every

walking minute taking good care of every patient. In the evening, she took a lamp with he

r to minister to patient after patient. The soldiers were moved deeply and they called her

“

the lady with the

lamp”

.By grace of her and her nurses, the death rate was reduced by t

wo-thirds.

In the summer of 1856, Nightingale returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. Me

t with a

hero?s

welcome, she was modest and did her best to refuse the public praise. Th

e Queen rewarded N

ightingale?s

work by presenting her with an engraved brooch which

came to be known as the

?Nightingale

Jewel?.

Moreover, Nightingale also received $$250,

000 as a prize grant from the British government.

In 1859, Nightingale published Notes on Hospitals which focused on the proper arra

ngements for civilian institutions and the next year, she presided over the funding of the

Nightingale School for the training of nurses at St.

Thomas?s

Hospital in London. From th

en on, Nightingale became an admirable figure in public, literary works were written to int

erpret this great

heroine?s

contribution. Young women were eager to follow her example,

even the women from upper class began enrolling in the training school. Because of Nigh

tingale?s

effort, nursing was no longer discriminated by the upper class.

At the age of 38, Nightingale was homebound and bedridden, because she had cont

acted

?Crimean

fever?

and would never fully recover. However, she continued to workin o

rder to improve health care and sanitation in India. After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 18

73, Nightingale reported that mortality among soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18

per 1000.