It's day to remember Florence Nightingale !..

It's International Nurses Day !

Hi ! It is 12th May and it is the Birth Anniversary of Florence Nightingale. Every year, nurses across the world celebrate International Nurses Day on 12 May, to mark the birth date of Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursing as a profession, and creator of the original system of nursing practice based on epidemiological data which she collected and analyzed. She came to be known as "The Lady with the Lamp", and she was a pioneering nurse, writer and noted statistician. Florence Nightingale was a great woman and when we talk or think about nursing, her name comes first to mind . This special post is dedicated to all nurses of the world who sacrifice their life for the mankind. Today's Post is a philatelic tribute to this greatest woman of all time ! This is all for today !...…..Till Next Post..……Have a Great Time !

Lady with the Lamp

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombia, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth. Growing up, Nightingale enjoyed tending to sick animals at her parents' estate, and delivering food to the poor and needy neighbours. These experiences set the stage for her desire to become a nurse. At the age of 25, she shared this dream with her parents, who promptly rejected her request. Their belief that nursing was an occupation unfit for a lady of her status was underscored by the fact that nurses were generally unschooled, unemployed and disreputable women. Who else would wish to work among the sick and dying, dealing with dirty bodily functions? Yet through her persistence, she was finally able to convince her father that as a nurse, she could change the world for the better. England, at the time, was without a training school for nursing, thus her father sent her to school in Kaiserwerth, Germany. Two years later in 1853, she returned to London as Resident Lady Superintendent of a hospital for invalid women at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses.

She had decided at an early age to shun marriage, so there was no point in learning to run a household. Nevertheless, many suitors had attempted to court her, one in particular named Richard Moncton Milnes. Her refusal to wed this rich and eligible bachelor angered her mother, but in her diary, she told of her reasons: “I have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfaction and that I would not find in his life. I could be satisfied to spend a life with him in combining our different powers to some great object. I could not satisfy this nature by spending a life with him in making society and arranging domestic things.”

Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On 21 October 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale and including her aunt Mai Smith, were sent (under the authorization of Sidney Herbert) to Turkey, about 545 km across the Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based. During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in The Times:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned these lines in her praise:

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

Florence Nightingale began the tradition of remaining with a dying soldier until his death, to help him write his last words home. Such compassion and caring endeared her to the soldiers. The lady with the lamp was never without a smile. A Catholic sister at Scutari Hospital recalled that she never seemed tired, that “Her voice was always soft. Her smile was always beautiful. She kept us all working together.”On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.

See More stamps on Florence Nightingale

http://www.childsdoc.org/spring97/stamps/stamps.asp

Florence Nightingale Stamp Exhibition at Congress

The Florence Nightingale International Foundation (FNIF) is celebrating its 75^th anniversary! FNIF is the premier foundation of the International Council of Nurses, supporting and complementing the work and objectives of ICN. Along with this special anniversary logo, FNIF has four very exciting initiatives planned to highlight the year.

To illustrate the tremendous influence that Florence Nightingale has had throughout the world, FNIF is going to showcase a special exhibition of stamps at the ICN booth during the Congress in Durban fron 27 June-4 July 2009. The collection which presents the story of Florence Nightingale and is the work of Marilyn Gendek, an Australian nurse and philatelist.