How did Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson impact the role of women in medicine?
Florence Nightingale wanted to become a nurse at a time when nursing was held in very low esteem in the UK, and was only considered suitable for lower class women or men. Influenced by visits to the Lutheran hospital at Kaiserwerth, Germany, she used her £500 allowance from her father to run an Institution for Sick Gentlewomen in London, gaining her first experience of committees and administration. In 1854 the Crimean war was in progress, and after reading an account of the conditions at Scutari she volunteered to go there; her friend, Sidney Herbert, now Secretary of WAr, invited her to lead a party of nurses. Accompanied by 38 nurses, she attacked the filthy and verminous conditions and established medical organization in the British Army. As Superintendant of the female nursing establishment in the war zone, within a few months she had reduced the death rate from 42 percent to 2.2. percent. She dealt with supplies and the welfare of the men. The ‘Lady with the Lamp’ returned to Eng
