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Florence Nightingale was born in a rich family. When she was young she took lessons in music and drawing, and read great books. She also traveled a great deal with her mother and father.

As a child she felt that visiting sick people was both a duty and a pleasure. She enjoyed helping them.

At last mind was made up. “I’m going to be a nurse, ” she decided.

“Nursing isn’t the right work for a lady, ” her father told her.

“Then I will make it so, ” she smiled. And she went to learn nursing in Germany and France. When she returned to England, Florence started a nursing home for home. During the Crimean War in 1854 she went with a group of thirty eight nurses to the front hospitals. What they saw there was terrible. Dirt and death were everywhere to be seen — and smelled. The officer there did not want any woman to tell him how to run a hospital, either. But the brave nurse went to work.

Florence used her own money and some from friends to buy clothes, beds, medicine and food for the men. Her only pay was in smiles from the lips of dying soldiers. But they were more than enough for this kind woman.

After she returned to England, she was honored for her services by Queen Victoria. But Florence said that her work had just begun. She raised money to build the Nightingale Home for Nurses in London. She also wrote a book on public health, which was printed in several countries.

Florence Nightingale died at the age of ninety, still trying to serve others through her work as a nurse. Indeed, it is because of her that we honor nurses today.