The practice of nursing was significantly strengthened by the founding of the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth, Germany, in 1836. This institute established the "motherhouse system," in which nurses were provided with the security of a job and a home. Graduates were sent all over the world to care for the sick and the needy. The most prominent of these was Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who is regarded as the founder of modern nursing.

By the time she was seventeen, Florence Nightingale had mastered several languages, and was well read in subjects ranging from philosophy and religion to science and mathematics. Her parents

74. Florence nightingale, June 6, 1857 courtesy of Nursing: An Illustrated History, M. Patricia Donahue, Ph. D., RN

objected to her desire to become a nurse because of the poor hospital conditions of that time. It took sixteen years to overcome these objections, but Nightingale eventually studied nursing at various European institutions.

In 1854, Nightingale led a team of nurses to Turkey, to care for British soldiers who had been wounded in the Crimean War. The death rate in military hospitals there was 42.7 percent. Barrack Hospital, Nightingale's first assignment, was housing 3,500 patients, more than twice the number for which it was designed. Men lay in ragged uniforms clotted with blood. Soap, water and towels were lacking, and there was no dietary or laundry equipment. Candles in empty beer bottles were the only source of light. An open, rat-infested sewer ran under the building.

Although Nightingale was dealt an unreliable nursing staff and military leaders who were resistant to change, she transformed the hospital into a true healing center. She set up five diet kitchens, a laundry, reading rooms, and coffee houses that provided music and recreation. Within six months, the death rate in the hospital dropped to 2.2 percent.

After Barrack Hospital, Nightingale traveled to other British military hospitals in Europe and Asia to begin similar transformations. She returned to England in July 1856, four months after the war ended. So great was the change she brought about that one of her biographers, Cecil Woodham-Smith, wrote, "Never again would the picture of a nurse be a tipsy, promiscuous harridan. Miss Nightingale had stamped the profession of nurse with her own image.... [I]n the midst of the muddle and the filth, the agony and the defeats, she had brought about a revolution."