Florence Nightingale: Nurse Pioneer

Florence Nightingale: Nurse, Pioneer introduces young readers to one of the most remarkable women in medical history. The cultural and historic background of her life are discussed in terms a young person can understand. Vocabulary study is incorporated in the text. The words are keyed to definitions at the end of the book.

The Remarkable Florence Nightingale (from the Introduction):
Every now and then someone comes along who carves an extraordinary path through life. People are attracted to the individual. Stories are told about the individual's childhood, family and relationships. Most of these stories have the same purpose: to try and understand how the individual came to be so remarkable. The question asked is always this: What is the secret behind such great success? It is this question that has led to speculation about Florence Nightingale for more than 150 years.

This book does not try to answer that question. In Florence's mind, there was no mystery behind her success. She believed God directed her to do her work. She believed God gave her the ability to get that work done.

Throughout her life, Florence Nightingale never asked for attention. She asked for help as she tried to do her work. Although she was very ambitious, it was not ambition for fame or money that drove her. It was an ambition to get the work done that she thought God had assigned to her.

After her heroic service in the Crimean War, people flocked around Florence Nightingale. They wanted to be close to this gifted person, almost as though by being close they could catch some of what she had.

Florence's celebrity did not please her. As people drew close, she pulled away. She was ill, it is true, but that illness does not explain her many years of seclusion. She was not available for visits from most people. Even her family had to make appointments to see her.

If she appreciated celebrity, it was for only one purpose: as a celebrity she could get important people to listen to her and help her to do her work. This, she believed, was God's will.

All of the stories about Florence Nightingale may tell us something of her character. They may tell us something about the way she lived. Certainly, she left many letters and manuscripts that revealed her heart and her ambitions. It is these that a reader should turn to for understanding of this remarkable woman.

However, in the end, what matters to history, what matters to the world, is not what people thought about Florence Nightingale or what she understood about herself. What matters is what she did. And that was extraordinary.

No one can challenge the fact that Florence Nightingale was brave, intelligent, determined and compassionate. No one can challenge the fact that she saved thousands of lives in her time, and since, through medical reforms. No one can challenge the fact that she inspired the Geneva Conventions and countless heroic nurses whose names we will never know.

It is Florence's work, and the environment in which it was accomplished, that matter. It is the work, and the amazing integrity of the woman who performed it, that is the subject of this book.

Florence Nightingale was a nurse and a medical pioneer. She was remarkable and extraordinary. She may have been British, but her gift was to the whole world, and to posterity. It is the world, and those of us who were born long after her, that owe her a debt of gratitude, and respect.

Prepare to meet, in the few pages of this book, the remarkable, and extraordinary, Florence Nightingale.