On this date in 1837, English nurse Florence Nightingale wrote that the voice of God had spoken to her, calling her to an as-yet unnamed mission. It wasn’t until nine years later that she learned what that mission was. In 1846, she began studying at a German school, where young women from rural areas were trained to care for the sick. Eventually, she became superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in London, and then went to the Crimea when the Crimean War broke out in 1854. There, Nightingale oversaw all British military hospitals in Turkey, where rooms for the sick were infested with fleas and rats, water was scarce, and medicine was nonexistent. She tended many wounded and sick soldiers, visiting them at night while she carried a lighted oil lamp from pallet to pallet. Once she returned to London, Nightingale crusaded to improve the lot of British soldiers and worked to improve nurses’ training. She is often heralded as the founder of nursing as a trained profession.

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