12th May: Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born on this date in 1820. Some things you might not know about the nursing pioneer:

1. She was born in Florence and named after the city she was born in.
2. Florence Nightingale's family didn't want her to go into nursing. They wanted her to get married and have babies. She didn't listen - she educated herself in the science of nursing instead.
3. She turned down at least one marriage proposal, from politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, because she was convinced marriage would interfere with her vocation.
4. Despite rejecting traditional roles for women and pursuing a career, she wasn't a feminist and believed that women were not as capable as men.
5. She was good at maths as well as nursing and was a pioneer in the use of graphics to illustrate statistical information. She was an early adopter of the pie chart and even developed a new type of pie chart, the polar area diagram, sometimes also called the Nightingale rose diagram, a circular histogram, to illustrate patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed.
6. When inspecting her Crimean hospitals, she would travel on horseback or in a Mule cart. She only started using a carriage with a hood and curtains after her mule cart overturned and she narrowly escaped serious injury.
7. She set up the first secular nursing school, the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas' Hospital in 1860. By 1865, her first class of trainees had started work at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary. Her school is now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, and is part of King's College London.
8. She wrote a book, Notes on Nursing, which is still read by trainee nurses today as it deals with the fundamentals of nursing - patient care and cleanliness.
9. In 1883, Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria. In 1904, she was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John (LGStJ). In 1907, she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. In 1908, she was given the Honorary Freedom of the City of London.
10. It is said that during her lifetime, Nightingale owned over 60 Cats, and at one point had 17 at once. Her favourite was a large Persian called Mr. Bismarck. “Cats possess more sympathy and feeling than human beings,” she said. The fact that they helped control the disease-carrying Rats in field hospitals probably helped, as well.