Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, and named after the city, to a wealthy English family. She was well educated by her father in languages, history and mathematics. At sixteen she felt a call from God to serve, and against her family's wishes she trained as a nurse in Germany. In 1854, during the Crimean War, reports reached Britain of terrible conditions for wounded soldiers. The government sent her with thirty-eight nurses to the army hospital at Scutari, near Constantinople. She found filth, crowded wards and shortages of everything; far more soldiers were dying of disease than of wounds. She organized supplies, kitchens and laundries, and the soldiers called her the Lady with the Lamp for her night rounds. After a sanitary commission cleaned the drains and ventilation, deaths fell sharply. Back in England she used statistics and new kinds of diagrams to persuade the government to reform army health and hospitals. In 1860 she founded a nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, and she wrote Notes on Nursing. Often bedridden later, she kept working from home. She died in 1910.

Faith: Remained in the Church of England throughout her life, with unorthodox views, including belief in universal reconciliation. Source: Wikipedia