Setting the Scene

When Florence Nightingale arrived at the Scutari hospital in 1854, soldiers were dying from disease faster than from Russian bullets. The hospital was a nightmare: filthy wards, no clean bedding, rats everywhere, sewers running under the building. Within months, Nightingale transformed it. Death rates dropped from 42% to 2%. She wasn't just "the Lady with the Lamp" — she was a brilliant statistician who proved that hospital conditions killed patients, and a ruthless organiser who changed nursing from disreputable work to a respected profession.