The devotion of Florence Nightingale

Good morning,

Today is the birthday of Florence Nightingale renowned for revolutionising nursing from her work in military hospitals during the Crimean war in 1954. They were overcrowded, unhygienic, vermin infested and soldiers died of cholera, typhus and dysentery more than their combat wounds. Florence brought in strict sanitation, a discipline of timetables and charts, a fresh air policy, quiet wards and high nutritional standards. The results cut mortality from around 40% to 2%.

But that’s only a part of her method and the rest is rarely remembered. Florence saw healing as wholistic, she believed that the person’s soul played an important part in recovery, so she also brought in libraries, reading rooms and recreational activities. The discipline and charts were to her the wisdom of nature in God’s creation. The silence ,which is now considered important for a peaceful recovery, was for her and her nurses a devotional, prayerful silence.

Her journals show that age 16 Florence was already praying for her vocation writing: ‘I will that God’s will.’ She wasn’t called to be a nun and struggled with how difficult it was for a woman to help God in the world compared to men. But she was tenacious and two years before she went to Crimea, she printed her first book on Christian mysticism arguing that we all grow towards union with God and she continued to translate medieval texts such as St. Theresa of Avilla and Thomas A. Kempis into old age alongside writing on nursing and founding the Nightingale training in St. Thomas Hospital London.

May I follow her inspiration to find my unique vocation and a wholistic healing that brings us back to life.

Amen.