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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.

Short biography of Florence Nightingale >>

Florence Nightingale

Quotes on Nursing

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Florence Nightingale
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All disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 5.

The symptoms or the sufferings generally considered to be inevitable and incident to the disease are very often not symptoms of the disease at all, but of something quite different—of the want of fresh air, or of light, or of warmth, or of quiet, or of cleanliness, or of punctuality and care in the administration of diet, of each or of all of these.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 5.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 6.

The word nursing … 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.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 6.

Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us, are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood than they were two thousand years ago.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 7.

Florence Nightingale

Quotes on Ventilation

A nurse is to maintain the air within the room as fresh as the air without, without lowering the temperature.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 10.

A celebrated medical lecturer began one day “Fumigations, gentlemen, are of essential importance. They make such an abominable smell that they compel you to open the window.” I wish all the disinfecting fluids invented made such an “abominable smell” that they forced you to admit fresh air. That would be a useful invention.

— Florence Nightingale

Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not (1859), 14.

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(source)

Florence Nightingale quote: It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it sho

(source)

Florence Nightingale quote: I attribute my success to this:— I never gave or took an excuse.

See also:

Science Quotes by Florence Nightingale.
12 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Nightingale's birth.
Large color picture of Florence Nightingale (1000 x 1334 px)
Florence Nightingale - testimony she gave to Parliament on poor clothing, food supplies and the state of the hosital at Scutari (20 Feb 1855).
Hospital Ward at Scutari - shown after the arrival of Florence Nightingale shown in a 1856 Lithograph (1000 x 638px)
Florence Nightingale - context of quote Study statistics - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
Florence Nightingale - context of quote Study statistics - Large image (800 x 600 px)
Florence Nightingale At Eighty-Five Says War Helps To Make Men Noble - from The Scrap Book (1908)
A Remarkable Woman - Order of Merit for Florence Nightingale, from The Scrap Book (1908)
Florence Nightingale, Lady of the Lamp - transcript of a 1940s radio talk by Charles F. Kettering.
Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon, by Mark Bostridge. - book suggestion.
Booklist for Florence Nightingale.

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: 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) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)