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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index N > Florence Nightingale Quotes > Nurse

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Florence Nightingale
(12 May 1820 - 13 Aug 1910)

English nurse and statistician , known as “The Lady With The Lamp,” who pioneered the improvement of nursing practices following her experience in the Crimean War, and continued to raise respect for nurses as medical professionals.


Florence Nightingale Quotes on Nurse (8 quotes)

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In a 1852 letter, Nightingale records the opinion of a young surgeon:
The account he gives of nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines.
— Florence Nightingale
Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter (8 Jan 1852), quoted in Edward Tyas Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale (1914), Vol. 1, 116.
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A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature.
— Florence Nightingale
In Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not (1859), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Room (42)  |  Temperature (82)

Beggars in the streets of London were at that time leading the lives of princes, compared to the life of our soldiers in the Crimea when I arrived on the scene with thirty-six nurses.
— Florence Nightingale
As quoted in ‘Little Chats With Big People’, The Scrap Book (Jan 1908), 5, No. 1, 43.
Science quotes on:  |  Beggar (5)  |  Compared (8)  |  Crimean War (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Live (650)  |  London (15)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Prince (13)  |  Scene (36)  |  Soldier (28)  |  Street (25)  |  Time (1911)  |  War (233)

For it may safely be said, not that the habit of ready and correct observation will by itself make us useful nurses, but that without it we shall be useless with all our devotion.
— Florence Nightingale
Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1860), 160.
Science quotes on:  |  Devotion (37)  |  Habit (174)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Observation (593)  |  Useful (260)  |  Will (2350)

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization, never intended ... to take in the whole sick population. May we hope that the day will come ... when every poor sick person will have the opportunity of a share in a district sick-nurse at home.
— Florence Nightingale
In 'Nursing of the Sick' paper, collected in Hospitals, Dispensaries and Nursing: Papers and Discussions in the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Section III, Chicago, June 12th to 17th, 1893 (1894), 457.
Science quotes on:  |  Civilization (220)  |  District (11)  |  Home (184)  |  Hope (321)  |  Hospital (45)  |  Intent (9)  |  Intermediate (38)  |  Never (1089)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Opportunity (95)  |  Person (366)  |  Poor (139)  |  Population (115)  |  Share (82)  |  Sick (83)  |  Stage (152)  |  Whole (756)  |  Will (2350)

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet—all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.
— Florence Nightingale
Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1860), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Application (257)  |  Better (493)  |  Cleanliness (6)  |  Diet (56)  |  Fresh (69)  |  Light (635)  |  Limit (294)  |  Limited (102)  |  Little (717)  |  Medicine (392)  |  More (2558)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Nursing (9)  |  Patient (209)  |  Power (771)  |  Proper (150)  |  Quiet (37)  |  Selection (130)  |  Signify (17)  |  Use (771)  |  Vital (89)  |  Want (504)  |  Warmth (21)  |  Word (650)

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this—“devoted and obedient.” This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.
— Florence Nightingale
Notes on Nursing: what it is and what it is not (1860), 200.
Science quotes on:  |  Definition (238)  |  Devoted (59)  |  Do (1905)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Horse (78)  |  Man (2252)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Obedient (9)  |  Other (2233)

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health, or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.
— Florence Nightingale
Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1860), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Constitute (99)  |  Element (322)  |  Good (906)  |  Health (210)  |  Law (913)  |  Little (717)  |  Nurse (33)  |  Nursing (9)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Reality (274)  |  Sick (83)  |  Understood (155)


See also:

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

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