Earlier this month, on May 12, was the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. History has noted her great contribution as a nurse, and her birthday is commemorated as International Nursing Day. She was called The Lady With The Lamp, and to those outside the medical profession, over time, she became a vague memory of a chapter from school textbooks.

A pioneer ahead of her time

She was, however, a pioneer in her field and a feminist before the word was even coined. Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy, to a wealthy British family and named after the city. Luckily, at a time when education was not a priority for women and careers were almost unheard of for those from privileged families, her father, William Nightingale, believed in women’s education and personally tutored Florence and her sister in mathematics, history, philosophy and classical languages. If not for her father, her “brilliant, analytical mind, displaying a particular affinity for data and organisation” (source: Internet) would have suffocated under the rigid norms of Victorian society.

At age 17, she rebelled against social expectations of marriage, motherhood and homemaking and believed she had a divine calling from God to enter into a life of service. Circumstances led her to take up nursing. In her time, nursing was considered menial work, not suitable for ladies of a certain social standing.

Understandably, her parents forbade her from training in nursing; eventually, in 1851, she went against her family to undergo three months of rigorous training at the Institution of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserswerth, Germany. By 1853, she had secured her first........

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