They did not call her the Lady with the Lamp.
Florence Nightingale was beloved for her care and her mercy, for her commitment to relieving the suffering of wounded soldiers on both sides of the Crimean War. Yes, she wandered the wards at night, carrying a lamp, checking on her patients; but the lamp became her symbol only after male journalists found her too forceful and analytical for public consumption. She already had a nickname when the press found her. She was the Lady with the Hammer.
The Crimean War, after all, was a political conflict. Neither side wanted to share supplies; both sides were set on the raw cost and gain of conflict. Florence had a hospital full of dying men and exhausted nurses, riddled with dysentery and cholera, funded with leftovers. So Florence took up the hammer and beat down the military storeroom doors.
According to some sources, this wasn’t an isolated incident. If you withheld necessary supplies, Florence would come in with her hammer and clean you out. Military leaders loathed her and feared her. She drank brandy with the soldiers, did statistics for fun, and had no respect for the politics of men.
She adapted her practice with each advancement in evidence— she entered the field of nursing believing that warm clothing and good food could prevent most disease, only to take up the causes of sanitation, drainage, isolation of communicable disease, and statistical epidemiology as science progressed. She was the first public health nurse and the first to turn nursing into a visible profession of advocacy and strength.
The WHO has declared 2020, Florence’s 200th birthday, the Year of the Nurse. In perfect irony, hundreds of thousands of nurses stand on the front lines of a pandemic exacerbated by politics and greed. We are understaffed, underfunded, underequipped, desperate for masks to protect ourselves and our patients, already watching our colleagues succumb to the virus from sheer intensity of exposure.
We need community help. We demand our leaders’ support. The symbol of our labor may be the lamp rather than the sickle; but like Florence our foremother, we are not afraid to take up the hammer.
Wanted to share this with you all 💜