8 Florence Nightingale Facts You Probably Didn't Know

Most people know Florence Nightingale as the Lady with the Lamp and the founder of modern nursing. Her reach went much further than that, into health care, social reform, army medicine, religion, and statistics. Here are eight facts about her you may not know.

1. She was deeply religious.

At 17, Nightingale believed she received a clear calling from God to serve. She didn't yet know the form it would take, but by 25 she had settled on nursing as the way to reduce suffering in the world. She studied theology and metaphysics for the rest of her life and, in 1860, privately published an 829-page work titled "Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth."

2. She got her first nursing job at 33.

Nightingale was born into the upper class, where a woman's expected role was to socialize, marry, and raise children. From a young age she rejected that future, turning down marriage proposals because they would interfere with her work, and she had to fight hard opposition from her own family to become a nurse. At 33 she was appointed superintendent at the new Hospital for Gentlewomen in Distress. Her instincts as a reformer and patient advocate were already clear: she fought the hospital committee and won the right to admit patients of all faiths, not just members of the Church of England.

3. Her biggest contribution to the Crimean War was not direct patient care.

At Scutari Hospital, Nightingale reduced patient deaths mainly by overcoming resistance from physicians, organizing the hospital, cleaning up the environment, and securing supplies. Her greatest work came after the war. She met with Queen Victoria, won her support, and convinced the government to open a commission of inquiry into the health of the army. Still exhausted and ill from the Crimean Fever she had contracted overseas, she prepared a 1,000-page report of tables and statistics on the health, efficiency, and hospital administration of the British Army. The commission's report drove sweeping changes to army health services.

4. She did most of her work while ill and housebound.

Nightingale nearly died from Crimean Fever, probably brucellosis, and it left her weak for the rest of her life. At 40, when the Nightingale School was founded, she believed she was near death. She lived and worked for another 50 years, dying at 90 in 1910. Most of that work was done from her bed or couch, sometimes with help from friends.

5. She is a model for patient advocacy.

Nightingale spent her life reforming the causes of ill health and improving care for the sick. Beyond establishing nursing as a profession for educated women, she worked on health administration, poor law reform, public health, and army medical services. Her toughness, intelligence, and upper-class standing let her deal with royalty, cabinet ministers, and ambassadors, and she lobbied hard to get her reforms enacted.

"No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this, 'devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse." –Florence Nightingale

She is sometimes criticized for not backing major causes of her day, including the feminist movement, and blamed for nurses remaining in a subordinate role. A careful read of her life and writings on the role of women shows that charge is far from accurate. She simply refused to be pulled away from the goals she had chosen.

6. She was an acclaimed statistician.

Nightingale had a gift for figures from childhood and once considered becoming a mathematician. Before 30 she had collected and analyzed extensive statistics on hospitals across Europe, and she used tables and graphs throughout her writing. She is regarded as one of history's most prominent statisticians and a pioneer in using applied statistics to drive social change. Thousands of lives were saved through her data and the new ways she found to display it, "to affect thro' the Eyes what we fail to convey to the public through their word-proof ears." She was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1859 and made an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

7. She was a prolific writer who still inspires scholars.

More than a century after her death, at least 13,000 of her letters survive in public archives and private collections, on top of her books and reports. She was the shadow author of many official government documents on health care and the military. Her collected works run to 16 volumes, and a digitization project launched in 2014 has made roughly 1,900 of her handwritten letters available to researchers in one place.

8. You can hear her voice.

In 1890, Edison recorded a greeting from Nightingale on a wax cylinder to raise funds for impoverished veterans. The recording still exists today.