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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.
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Florence Nightingale
Quotes on Nursing

— 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.
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.