ABSTRACT
I had no personal contact with Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), but her name was universally revered in Britain in my youth, and when I became a medical student at St. Thomas's Hospital the Nightingale nurses were an important factor in life at the hospital. Our teachers taught also the nurses under training at the Nightingale Home, and Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing and on Hospitals were accepted as incorporating the highest teaching in hospital and general hygiene. A short sketch of her work must therefore be given here as a formative influence in my personal life and work in view of her influence on medical opinion, and still more because she was a pioneer in sick-nursing, and in advocating the work of female health missioners, who as "health visitors" have become in the last thirty years invaluable in hygienic work.
