Florence Nightingale - Laura E. Richards

This biography of Florence Nightingale is intended for younger readers eager to understand her immense contributions to the nursing profession.

Published in 1911, the year following the death of the celebrated nurse – whom this book calls ‘The Angel of the Crimea’ – we discover much about Florence’s life, motivations and accomplishments. This book focuses on the practices she put in place during the Crimean War; with a limited staff and in an atmosphere where medical care was abysmal, Nightingale organized a regime of care that saved many lives.

She organized and pioneered a timetable of feeding and caring for patients, dramatically improved the standards of hygiene, and elevated nursing to a formal profession. The rapid improvements in mortality rate among those injured in the Crimea soon became common knowledge; the newspapers in Britain dubbed Florence ‘The Lady with the Lamp’, being as she could often be sighted making her rounds long after the rest of her staff had turned in for the night.