Kind-hearted and renouncing riches
The father, William, and the mother, Fanny, were of noble blood. In England, they owned two homes: Incline Cottage and Emberley Gardens. Every summer, the scorching sun, their family like migratory birds, non-stop to the "YinYue villa" summer; and in the rest of the year, they live in the garden of Embry-Riddle. In the spring and fall, the family was busy visiting friends and relatives in nearby London. Little Florence's childhood was spent in heavenly surroundings.
But, strangely enough, her excitement was often not with her little friends. She loved riding ponies and talking and playing with the kittens, puppies and birds around her. She delights in taking care of them. Once, when a little tit died, she wrapped the bird in a handkerchief and buried it under a pine tree in the garden, and put up a little tombstone with an epitaph on it-
Poor little tit/why did you die/the crown on your head/was so beautiful//but now/you lie there/ignoring me! / Unheeding
Since she was a little girl, she kept to herself and was not as mischievous as the average child. She was stubborn and obstinate, sentimental and seemed overly precocious. She grew up alone in the midst of all the bustle.
Emberley's garden was prosperous, but outside it was devastated, and in 1842 England was in an economic depression, with starvation on every corner. Florence wrote in her notes: No matter what time, my heart, always can not let go of those suffering people ......
July 1843, it is the hot season, Nightingale's family once again to the Villa YinYue summer summer when she defied her family's objections to go to help the poor around. She was not afraid of filth and suffering, and spent more and more of her time in the huts of the sick. Because many of the sick lacked food and clothing, she often insisted that her mother give her some medicine, food, sheets, bedding, clothes, etc. She used these for the relief of the poor. These she used for the relief of the poor, in order to relieve their immediate needs. When it was time to return to Emperley Gardens, Florence did not want to stop halfway, she wanted to stay in the area. But her mother argued that a daughter of nobility should be doing something else, and that wasting time nursing the poor was absurd. With her father and sister also siding with her mother, Florence is left alone.
In the English mindset at the time, dealing with patients of all kinds was dirty and dangerous. People shied away from words like "hospital" and "nursing" because they were horrible, humiliating things. Due to the backwardness of medical standards, coupled with the decline of the country's power and frequent wars, in the United Kingdom after 1844, hospitals were almost synonymous with misfortune, degradation, sloppiness and chaos. Lacking the necessary management, it sometimes resembled nothing less than a madhouse. In Florence's view, the most unacceptable thing was not the terrible medical conditions, but the bad reputation of the hospital "nurses" and their low quality.
In August 1845, Florence traveled with her father to Manchester to visit her sick grandmother. She stayed with her grandmother to nurse her as she became more ill, bedridden and lacking in care. Soon, her grandmother's health improved considerably. Then Mrs. Gale, the old nanny, fell ill again. Florence rushed back to the house and nursed the very sick Mrs. Gale with great care. Florence stayed at her bedside until her death.
In the fall of that year, when the plague struck the countryside near Emporium Gardens, Florence, along with the local pastor, took an active role in caring for the sick. She was proving herself over and over again, and her faith in life grew stronger. In those days, people thought that nursing was simple and required no training at all. Even Florence herself used to think that with patience and compassion, she could help patients relieve their illnesses, and that was all nursing was about. One day, she witnessed a woman, dying in agony in front of her - a patient who had taken the wrong medication. "She was bound to have died in agony; the caregivers had 'poisoned' her!" This thought struck her as a great revelation. She knew from then on that nursing was an important discipline. She had no choice but to learn about it if she was to realize her ambitions.
A few miles from Emperley Gardens, there was a dispensary where the attending physician, Mr. Fuller, was of some repute, said to be a graduate of Oxford University, and an old friend of the Nightingale family. So Florence intended to persuade her parents to give her some time to study at this clinic. When Mr. and Mrs. Fuller were invited to be guests at Emperley Gardens, she offered to study under Fuller in front of her parents.
A storm broke out. The father left; the mother went mad, saying she couldn't bear the thought any longer; and even the sister shouted hysterically that she must be "possessed" - not only was it beneath the aristocracy, but it would also bring germs into the house and kill the whole family.
The Fullers were embarrassed. In order to appease the Nightingales, they had to "pour cold water" on Florence and persuade her to give up her idea.
Under great mental pressure, she gritted her teeth and did not give in. She began to secretly study hospital reports and government blue books. She also wrote privately to foreign experts (such as the Prussian ambassadors, Mr. and Mrs. Benson), asking them for advice on various issues. And, from time to time, she asked for surveys on the hospital situation in the cities of Paris and Berlin. Every morning she studied for at least an hour or more. When the breakfast bell rang, she would quickly gather up her books and go downstairs to dinner as if nothing had happened, looking regular and trying not to mention her inner thoughts. Her mother put her in charge of organizing the pantry, the pantry, and the hiding room, and she didn't dare to slow down at all. She hoped that her mother would come around. She wrote to her friend, Miss Clark, "I have had to do a lot of housework. The coats, glasses, and china are buried up to my chin. They are simply tedious. I can't help but ask myself, 'Is this life? Is this what a reasonable person, a person willing to make a difference, wants to do every day?'"
She also received an olive branch of love. At a party, she befriends Richard, a young philanthropist (it was from his proposal to separate juvenile offenders from adults to receive more reasonable and humane corrections). Richard fell in love with her at first sight, and the two of them talked about poetry and paintings and had a pleasant relationship. Richard's countless letters were a great source of spiritual comfort to Florence in her time of loneliness and helplessness, and she once referred to him as "the man I admire." However, when he proposed, she thought long and hard about it, but refused him. She wrote to Richard, "I am destined to be a wanderer. For the sake of my vocation, I would rather have no marriage, no society, no money.
Florence had exuded an attitude of pursuing a life of celibacy in a letter while talking about her views on marriage: 'The common prejudice is that, in the final analysis, one must marry; it is the inevitable destination. However, I ultimately feel that marriage is not the only thing. It is entirely possible for a person to find greater pleasure in her career, in making herself feel fulfilled and satisfied." Thereafter, she rejected all suitors. But Nightingale in her later years of public pedantry confessed her sexual orientation, she wrote in her diary with the British and Prussian women in bed with the excitement of the feelings, she also in a number of private letters to praise their love with women, European and American experts after years of examination and verification to determine that Nightingale does have a homosexual tendency, Nightingale also showed their own breaking through the stereotypes of this courageous side.
At Florence's request, Sir Benson sent her a book, "The Annals of the Women of Christian Charity at Caesar's Wolds". The book described Kaiserwurz's advanced philosophy in nursing and the circumstances surrounding it.
She read it carefully and was overjoyed. As a charitable medical institution, Kaiserwurz was exactly the place she had dreamed of for years. It was a place where she could be properly trained in all aspects of the profession, and where the religious atmosphere and the strict rules were a "shield" to protect the nurse's reputation from public criticism.
But she did not dare to ask her parents to go directly to Caesar's Wards, and took advantage of her convalescence to go first to Frankfurt, which was at that time at the forefront of nursing in the world. At a dispensary she learned a number of useful things. Two weeks later, she left feeling qualified to be a certified caregiver.
When her parents and sister found out that she had been "thieving" at nursing and was studying medicine privately, they all shook with anger. They joined forces to punish her, making her "shut up" and not allowed to leave the house.
She was at war with her family for years. Time flew, and on June 8, 1851, Florence wrote in her notes, with unprecedented firmness, "I must be clear that, by holding out and waiting, opportunities will pass me by in vain. From them, all I would get was a growing conflict. I was clearly not going to get sympathy or support. Should I just sit back and wait? Absolutely not! I must fight on my own for all those things on which I depend. I must take matters into my own hands with regard to the causes that belong to me. My lot in life, my true happiness, depends on my efforts; they will never be bestowed on me." On this occasion, she did indeed "walk the talk and walk the walk." First, under the pretext of going out for a walk, she went to Caesar's Wards; and after studying there for two weeks, she decided to go again to Frankfort, in order to obtain a more systematic study. She calmly announced her decision to her family; her father was still calm, but her mother and sister, alarmed, again endeavored to prevent it. This time Florence did not budge at all. The three of them had a huge fight. When the father saw that his efforts were ineffective, he became angry and walked out of the house with his shotgun and his dog. After he left, they argued even more. Her mother even tried to slap her, but she deftly dodged it.
The next day, Florence bravely left the house. To the Reverend Siddall Fledner's asylum - an institution that boasted a hospital, a nursery, an orphanage and a school to train schoolgirls.
Florence lived in a small room within the orphanage. She worked at the orphanage and at the Frankfurt Women's Hospital. All the work she learned to do, she refused to be left behind at all, even surgical care she attended. This was very hard for her. After all, at that time, it was completely "unseemly" for an aristocratic woman. She understood that, but she didn't care.
During this time, she wrote several letters home about her situation and her desire to reconnect with her family. On her 32nd birthday, she thanked her family for their well wishes and wrote a special letter to her father, Verne. It read:
"Although it is true that I am not young, I will nevertheless be more persistent in exercising my vocation. Indeed, I am happy that I have finally regained my freedom. My unfortunate adolescence is behind me, and I don't hold on to it much. It will never return, and I rejoice in that because it means that I will have a new life."
Dignified and generous, with a molded ambition
One day in 1837, Nightingale felt she had heard the voice of God asking her to fulfill a mission. From an early age, she used to care for the sick and disabled in nearby villages and nursed her relatives to relieve the suffering of the sick. Her parents objected to her becoming a nurse, believing it to be a disgrace to the family honor. But feudalism and social influence never made her lose faith in nursing.
Young Nightingale often assisted her father's old friend (a doctor) to take good care of patients, and gradually became interested in nursing. She traveled to Germany, France, Greece and other places to study the hospitals and charitable organizations in these countries, enriching her experience and strengthening her determination to pursue a career in nursing. She studied nursing on her own and participated actively in discussions with medical societies on issues such as social welfare, children's education, and the improvement of hospital facilities.
Because of her family's wealth, Florence Nightingale's early years were extremely privileged. The people they interacted with were also socialites, including politicians, literary writers, artists, and some local gentlemen of the time. This enabled her to fully enjoy the comfortable life of the Victorian era. But in Nightingale's little mind, the face of this kind of pampered life and do not feel happy, she is shy and shy, do not want to see strangers, often have a kind of inexplicable sense of silence. At the age of twelve, she studied Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, history, mathematics and philosophy with her father. Under her father's guidance, Nightingale made great progress in her studies. She often read aloud with her father, talked with him, and exchanged letters when he traveled, and in 1837, the family traveled to the European continent, where her parents took their daughters to learn more about the world. Nightingale was already seventeen years old and had become a beautiful young lady. The family spent a year and a half traveling throughout France, Italy, and Switzerland, enjoying the lakes, mountains, and artistic monuments along the way, and examining social conditions everywhere. Nightingale from a young age has developed the habit of remembering things and writing a diary, what they saw and heard, are - a record, which became an important information for her future schooling and governance. She met some famous people in France and socialized with famous women who were engaged in social activities. She took a keen interest in politics and the public, and was particularly attentive to charitable organizations. Since she was a teenager, she had this self-belief in the service of mankind and a strong will to help the world.
After traveling on the European continent, she found the care in hospitals to be extremely poor, and felt that England needed to have a home like the Sisters of Mercy of St. Vincent de Paul in France. She felt that there was a need in Britain for nuns to care for the sick, as in the French convent of St. Vincent de Paul. Nursing began to germinate in her mind and she wanted to be a nurse! The image of nurses in England at that time was that of crude, aging women who were stupid, ignorant and incapable of performing medical tasks. Nightingale's choice of this work seemed to her mother simply incredible!
In 1839, the family returned to the United Kingdom, by which time Nightingale had become a dignified and generous, often in the family meeting with celebrities, very much the world's attention and appreciation. She was particularly fond of meeting social workers and innovators from all walks of life, including a well-known physician who worked at Longleesbury and inspired her to study at the hospital.
Hospital wards at the time were mostly one large, overcrowded room with beds in close proximity to each other, walls and floors covered in blood and stains, and the stench was unbearable for those who came in. Such deplorable conditions abounded everywhere, and there was little difference. Once a U.S. physician Samuel Hao to her home as a guest, Nightingale asked him to consult on the idea of being a nurse, Dr. Hao praised her ideas and encouraged her to persevere in her efforts, but ultimately difficult to obtain parental approval. During this time, Nightingale to cater to the hearts of parents, one side of the study, absorb the new knowledge about health, one side of the arrangement in the parents, to participate in some social activities, and met two extremely intimate boyfriend. One was her cousin Henry Nicholson; the other was Charles Mains. Their advances, however, were both rejected by Nightingale. She decided to be celibate! What a remarkable decision this was at the time, and she resolved to dedicate herself to nursing! She described her feelings at the time in detail in her diary, word for word and tear for tear. Mains went on to become a member of Parliament and a lifelong supporter of Nightingale's cause. At the beginning of 1848, she met with Hildeuer Hebert in Rome, who was handsome and well-mannered, a British gentleman. Hébert and Nightingale became instant friends and maintained a lifelong, noble friendship, and he was later elected minister of war, giving strong support to Nightingale's cause.
October 1849, she once again traveled with friends as far as Egypt, crossing the sea to Greece; in April of the following year, she arrived in Athens. On May 12, 1850, her thirtieth birthday, Nightingale wrote in her notebook: "Today I am thirty years old, the age at which Jesus Christ began to preach. From now on, there should be no more childish behavior. No more thoughts of love and marriage. Only let me think in accordance with God's will and do what he has ordained me to do. She felt that it was her God-given responsibility to devote herself to nursing!
Founding a nursing school and volunteering to save lives
In her time, no one of stature was a nurse. Those who were nurses were often ignorant, rude, alcoholic, untrained women. She took advantage of traveling to Europe to learn about nursing everywhere. She finally chose the Catherwolds Hospital, which she had learned about, and attended a short four-month training course there in 1851, making her dream of studying to be a nurse finally come true. During her studies, she experienced first-hand the hard work that nursing requires to relieve patients' pain and give them spiritual comfort. 1844 saw her set off from England on a tour of the European continent, covering France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and other countries, and visiting hospitals in various countries, and in 1850, despite her family's objections, she went to Kaisersführerstrasse, Germany to receive her nursing training. Her talents were discovered, and in 1853 she was employed as superintendent of the London Nursing Association for Sick Women.
Sandinger's ambition finally moved her father to promise to fund her with five hundred pounds a year. And on August 12, 1853, in the Charity Commission under the financial support, Nightingale in London, Harley Street, No. 1, set up a nursing home, began to show her ambitions, she took many measures, so that people at the time breathtaking. She adopted the patient's call bell, set up a winch in the kitchen to carry meals to the sick, and emphasized that "any woman, regardless of creed, rich or poor, who is sick, can be taken in. ......" She showed remarkable ability in her work, and everyone obeyed her.
August 1854, cholera in the slums of suburban London, Nightingale, regardless of personal safety, volunteered to participate in emergency ambulance work. She spent her days running around the hospital tending to dying patients, many of whom died in her arms. Mrs. Caskell held Nightingale's righteousness in high esteem because she personally experienced and felt Nightingale's dedication, and she described it this way: "She was tall, slim and slender; a head of short, thick brown hair; fair complexion; gray eyes flashed with a sad, sullen look, but at times they showed waves of joy, which was truly unforgettable; her teeth were beautifully straight and neat, and her smile was sweet. , and a sweet smile. Her head was covered with a long, soft scarf of hair, tied up along the corners, which set off her white, quiet, melon-faced face with even greater beauty. She often wore a long blouse of black silk material and a black shawl, giving the impression of grace and elegance and generosity."
The Goddess of the Lamplighters, Righteousness
In 1853, the Crimean War broke out between Turkey, Britain, France and other countries and Russia. in March 1854, Britain and France formally declared war on Russia in order to aid Turkey. in September, the allied forces of Britain and France landed in the Crimea, and in the reports sent back from the front, there was quite a lot of talk about the wounded soldiers not being taken care of. The report said that there were nuns to take care of the wounded in France and the Sisters of Mercy in Russia, so why were there no nuns to take care of the wounded in Britain! Moreover, the medical care provided by the British army was very poor. The death rate of the wounded was 42%.
When these facts were disclosed by the press, there was an outcry. Nightingale heard the news and immediately wrote a letter to Mrs. Hébert, then Minister of War, offering to lead forty nurses at her own expense to help the wounded. For a 35-year-old woman at the time, this was a very daunting challenge. At that time, female nurses, known as "Sisters", had long been in existence in the advanced countries of Europe, but Britain, because of religious and social stereotypes, had always been opposed to the presence of female nurses in hospitals, especially in war hospitals. on October 15, Minister Hébert acceded to her request and sent a letter back to Florence Nightingale, inviting her to to lead a group of nurses to Scutari, to be appointed by the government and given financial support. Nightingale readily agreed, and five days later the government made her head of the Women's Nursing Corps at the British General Hospital in Turkey. The corps consisted of thirty-eight members, of whom fourteen were professional nurses selected by the hospitals and twenty-four by the religious orders, and on October 21st they hastily dressed for the journey. Arriving at Scutari on November 4, they were immediately put to busy work.
Initially, the doctors, based on traditional perceptions and jealousy, advocated that they should not be allowed to enter the ward without a doctor's instruction. They were turned away for four days in a row. In the face of this situation, Nightingale first began to improve the diet of the wounded soldiers, change dirty clothes, *** with the commitment to clean up the work. She y felt that a perfect hospital, there must be adequate water supply and good drainage system. In three months she cleaned 10,000 shirts. In order to accommodate 800 new patients, she paid for emergency repairs to the wards. Nightingale's positive spirit of service finally dissolved the hostility of the military doctors and won the love and trust of the wounded. Night and day, she put all her heart into nursing work, so that the hospital gradually on track, and her office, naturally, has become the center of radiating warmth and love. The site of the British hospital was originally a Turkish garrison barracks, the building was simple and simple, and the equipment was even more scarce, so the whole hospital was dirty and disorganized. Because the hospital was scheduled to accommodate 2,500 wounded, all the corridors were opened as wards. These corridors were four miles long, with overcrowded beds, poor sanitary facilities, particularly poor ventilation, foul smells, sludge on rainy days, sandy soil on sunny days, and swarms of rats roaming about, making it an extremely hostile environment. Each patient was allocated only 500 milliliters of water per day. As there were not enough beds, many patients slept on the floor, and there were not enough blankets, some of which were replaced by canvas, which many wounded soldiers preferred not to use. Fuel was constantly in short supply, and the provision of meals was even more unsatisfactory. General medicine was extremely scarce. Under these poor conditions, a large number of wounded soldiers were infected with dysentery and cholera.
Nandingale took out her own 30,000 pounds for the hospital to buy drugs and medical equipment and re-organization of the hospital, improve the living environment of the wounded and nutritional conditions, reorganization of the operating room, cafeteria and laboratory, and soon changed the face of the field hospitals can only take in 1,700 wounded field hospitals through her arrangements actually received 3,000 to 4,000 wounded. Here, her managerial and organizational talents were brought into full play. 6 months later, the field hospital underwent a dramatic change, and the casualty mortality rate dropped rapidly from 42% to 2%. This miraculous and visible nursing effect shook the country, and at the same time changed the value of nurses in Britain and raised the status of women, nursing work has been valued by the community since then. The importance of nursing was recognized. At the same time, for women to open up and create a noble profession. Nightingale to pay great energy and effort, she established a nurse patrol system, every night she always carries a wind lamp patrol wards, often working more than 20 hours a day. When night fell, she carried a small oil lamp, along the rugged path, in the camp 4 miles away, bed by bed to see the sick and wounded. The soldiers affectionately called her "the lady with the lamp" and "the angel of the Crimea". The sick and wounded wrote: "The light came wavering over, and the cold night seemed to be filled with warmth. ...... Hundreds of us lay there, and when she came, we struggled to kiss her slender figure floating on the wall, and then lay back contentedly on our pillows." This is known as the "shadow kiss." As a result, the "nurse with a lamp" and the "candle-lighting and hooding ceremony for student nurses" have also become common subjects for Nightingale commemorative stamps and nurses' stamps.
Sandra Nightingale's great success in the Crimea and the spirit of selfless work, won the praise of the public in all countries. The importance of nurses' work was recognized, and nursing has been valued by society ever since.
Overworked, Nightingale contracted a lifelong illness. She suffered from Crimean fever in the Crimea, and continued to work before her health was fully restored.In November 1856 she returned to England as the last of the evacuees. At the end of the war, Nightingale avoided the government's ceremonial welcome and quietly returned home to England under the name of "Miss Smith". She said, "I don't want flattery, as long as the people understand me."