Introductory notes on lying-in institutions

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was named after Florence, the city where she was born. Her wealthy family opposed her wish to become a nurse, but she trained in Germany, and in 1854 led a team of nurses to the British military hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War, where soldiers called her the Lady with the Lamp.

Back in England she used statistics, and diagrams she designed, to prove that most soldiers died of disease, not wounds, and to reform hospitals and sanitation. She founded a school of nursing at St Thomas' Hospital and wrote Notes on Nursing. She was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.