Nurse

For most of recorded history, the word nurse meant a wet-nurse, a woman hired to breastfeed another woman's child. The Latin root nutrix meant "nursing mother," and the role carried no medical training or clinical authority.¹ Caring for the sick was left to family members, religious orders, or servants with no formal preparation.

That changed in 1854, when Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War. She found wounded soldiers lying in hallways, sewage seeping through floors, and a mortality rate above forty percent.² Nightingale imposed hand-washing, ventilation, and clean linens. Within months, the death rate fell dramatically.

Nightingale returned to England a national figure and used that visibility to build an institution. In 1860, she opened the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world.³ The curriculum separated nursing from domestic service and from religious charity. Students followed a structured program of clinical instruction and examination.

Her 1859 book Notes on Nursing sold widely and became a reference for hospital administrators across Europe and North America.⁴

1860, The year the Nightingale Training School opened at St Thomas' Hospital in London

By the end of the nineteenth century, nursing schools had opened in the United States, Canada, Australia, and across the British Empire, most modeled on Nightingale's curriculum.⁵ The occupation that had once meant breastfeeding now meant clinical expertise, patient observation, and professional certification.

Today, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the world. The World Health Organization estimated in 2020 that there were roughly 28 million nurses globally, representing more than half of all health workers.⁶

Timeline

• 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War.
• 1859, Nightingale published Notes on Nursing, which became a reference across Europe and North America.
• 1860, The Nightingale Training School opened at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
• 2020, The World Health Organization estimated roughly 28 million nurses working worldwide.

Endnotes

1. Douglas Harper, "Nurse," Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed March 2026.
2. Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 252-278.
3. Lynn McDonald, ed., Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, vol. 12 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009).
4. Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not (London: Harrison, 1859).
5. Patricia D'Antonio, American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 15-40.
6. World Health Organization, State of the World's Nursing 2020 (Geneva: WHO, 2020), 1.