A Radio Talk by Charles F. Kettering Florence Nightingale was born 125 years ago in Florence, Italy. Unlike so many of our other pioneers, she was the daughter of wealthy English parents and reared more or less in luxury. As a young woman, she became somewhat of a problem to her parents. They saw she was not happy in being just a young lady of fashion. She had, what was to them, an unhealthy and unnatural interest in Nursing. Nursing in those days was far from what we know today. A hundred years ago the majority of hospitals were centers of misery, suffering and in too many cases, dirt. But, despite all this, Florence still wanted to be a nurse, and finally persuaded her parents to let her attend the Deaconess Training School at Kaiserwerth in Germany. For two years she studied and worked under rigorous conditions but in. stead of being discouraged, she wrote her mother, "This is Life! I wish for no other world but this." |