Florence Nightingale

This is a brief review of the accomplishments of Florence Nightingale. She is known to all as the Lady with the Lamp and the Founder of Modern Nursing. It is less well-known that in her lifetime she played a major role in the reform of the medical services of the British Army and the initiation of the British Army Medical School; she was a statistician and one of the founders of epidemiology; she was a world authority on hospital design; and additionally she was a linguist and a Greek scholar. She achieved all this, not through being a ministering angel, but because of her iron will, hard work, leadership, and political skill.