Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) was a celebrated British social reformer and statistician. She is respectfully known as the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers.

On 21 October 1854, she and the staff of 38 women volunteer nurses that she trained were sent to the Ottoman Empire. Nightingale arrived early in November 1854 at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar in Istanbul).

During the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname “The Lady with the Lamp” from a phrase in a report in The Times:”She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.”

Nightingale was considered a pioneer in the concept of medical tourism as well, based on her 1856 letters describing spas in the Ottoman Empire. She detailed the health conditions, physical descriptions, dietary information, and other vital details of patients whom she directed there. The treatment there was significantly less expensive than in Switzerland.

In the Crimea on 29 November 1855, the Nightingale Fund was established for the training of nurses. The Nightingale Fund having raised £45,000 set up the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital on 9 July 1860.