to provide modern mechanical means of cleaning and disinfection, to supply the camps with all kinds of clothing, food, surgical instruments, and medicines, and she strove to equip them with medical departments and then with such means of recreation as could be had: an army post office, a savings bank, convalescent homes, reading rooms, recreation clubs, and special care for the soldiers' families.
Her singular personality and rare gifts shone forth: her mere passing among the sick brought about an improvement in them, and they would await the coming of her lamp on the round of inspection each evening as the sick man awaits the coming of health.
Yet despite her glorious deeds in the Crimean War she was not spared the malice of enemies and enviers, who wove plots to bring her down and belittle her; but the English people's attachment to her, and her influence with the royal family, blocked those endeavors. From that time the government of England secured her position by granting her a permanent post in the War Office and giving her the title of General Superintendent of the corps of nurses.
In the Crimea she was stricken with a severe illness, and this, added to the hardships she had met with in the war, told badly upon her health, and its effects accompanied her all her life. Had she allowed herself a long rest she would have recovered her strength entirely, but she would consent to nothing but to continue the labor and carry on the work she had begun.
She did not sever her connection with the army after the Crimean War, but strove to complete the reforms she had set on foot. She drew up confidential reports for the government on the deficiencies she had witnessed and the needs she had come to know, and thanks to her criticisms and proposals the most important of the reforms
carried out in the administration of the army were accomplished.
The question of raising the standard of health in India drew her attention, and she undertook wide-ranging investigations covering major subjects such as the land, irrigation, and taxation, drawing up on all this ample reports, which were taken as the basis of what the governors did toward the cleansing of India and the improvement of the health of the British army there.
The British government valued her services and granted her a great money reward, which she spent on realizing the idea that had haunted her for so long: the founding of a school for the training of nurses according to her new method. She attached this school to St. Thomas's Hospital and watched over its birth and growth to the end of her long life. Her greatest concern was to bring up good nurses, fit not only for nursing but also for training others and spreading the modern principles of the art; for this reason she called them missionary nurses — that is, ready to go to the farthest ends of the earth to spread their message.
What was that message which Florence Nightingale wished to spread, and what is the pivot of the method known by her name? She left a number of books in which she set down her experiences and expounded her theories, the most important being “Notes on Hospitals” and “On Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not.” From what she wrote we may conclude that the first of the reform measures she called for was that the administration of the nursing staff be taken out of the hands of men — that is, of the doctors and the hospital directors — and placed in the hands of a woman who should herself be a nurse of wide culture and experience. From that time her theory was put into effect in all modern hospitals and became the mainstay of the system called by her name.
As for the second point she pressed in her writings, it was the summons to people to change their view of the art of nursing — the urging that it be counted among the ideal women's professions, requiring long preparation and wide scientific study, and that people give up regarding it as a work of pity and sacrifice fit for nuns and penitents; for in it there is wide room for fruitful service that wins the soul contentment and joy and makes its practice a wellspring of delight, not a path of penance or self-mortification. It was perhaps, at that time, the only women's profession that offered educated women a work uniting dignity with the spirit of adventure and of constructive reform.
Her fame reached the United States, and the great reformers, men and women, corresponded with her — such as Harriet Martineau, who worked with her on a project for combating prostitution. Florence left correspondence and opinions on all manner of health and social subjects, and took part in a number of public projects, such as the reform of the Liverpool hospital and the assistance of the Swiss Henry Dunant in founding the international Red Cross society.
And despite her seclusion in her room by reason of her failing health, she went on striving, corresponding, and watching the developments of her age, sending out her radiance to every corner of the world, until she reached her ninetieth year and that flame was extinguished which had lit its age and wrought in the world of health and nursing a revolution no less important than that which Pasteur wrought in the world of medicine. She was buried, according to her will, in her family's burial place; had it not been for this, the English people would have buried her in Westminster Abbey beside the great figures of the world who raised England's name among the peoples of the earth.