"Nursing is an art,
and if it is to be made an art,
It requires an exclusive devotion
as hard a preparation,
as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with
dead canvas or dead marble,
compared with having to do
the temple of God's spirit?
It is one of the Fine Arts:
I had almost said,
the finest of Fine Arts."
-Florence Nightingale
 
  Florence Nightingale 1820-1910 Born in Italy, the daughter of wealthy parents. Despite her parents' disapproval and the fact that in mid-nineteenth century nursing was not considered a suitable profession for well educated women, Florence trained in Germany and became a nurse. In 1853, she took a position as Superintendent of the Establishment for Gentlewomen during illness, in London. During the Crimean war she was appointed to oversee the introduction of female nurses into the military hospitals in Turkey. In 1860 her best known work, Notes on Nursing, was published. It set the principles of nursing: careful observation and sensitivity to the patient's needs. Notes on Nursing has been translated into eleven foreign languages and is still in print today.