National Portrait Gallery celebrates importance of nurse pioneers
A new online National Portrait Gallery exhibition reveals the pioneering work of Victorian medics, including nurses Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.
A Picture of Health is an interactive resource for GCSE history students, teachers and the public. It provides a timeline detailing the contributions of nurses, doctors and social reformers to the advancement of medicine and health care from 1840-1920.
After the British War Office refused her application to join nurses working in Crimea in 1854, Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole funded her own trip to the Crimea where she opened a hotel to provide help to injured soldiers.
In 1859, Florence Nightingale published her discovery that 16,000 of the 18,000 soldiers who died in the Crimean War did not die from wounds but died from diseases brought about by unsanitary conditions in camps and hospitals. Her work transformed hospitals into clean, efficient places of healing.
The timeline also documents the work of William Rathbone, who founded district nursing in Liverpool in the mid 1800s. Also included is Maud McCarthy, the matron-in-chief of the British Army’s nursing operation in France during the first world war.
Click here to view the exhibition