Happy Birthday Florence Nightingale!
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC 12 May 1820 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse.
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Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.
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But while better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism.
An essay she wrote called Cassandra protests the over-feminization of women into near helplessness, such as Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service.
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Suggestions for Thought is also Nightingale's work of theology, her own theodicy, which develops her heterodox ideas. Nightingale questioned the goodness of a God who would condemn souls to hell, showing sympathy for the idea of universal reconciliation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
She was an amazing woman!