Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Florence Nightingale - Redefined Nursing With Compassion and Common Sense
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In this episode, we dive deep into the extraordinary life and legacy of Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of modern nursing and a groundbreaking statistician whose work revolutionized healthcare forever.
Most people know her as "The Lady with the Lamp"—the compassionate nurse tending to wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. But Nightingale was far more than a comforting presence. She was a brilliant reformer, a data-driven visionary, and a relentless advocate for sanitary conditions in hospitals.
Join us as we uncover the fierce determination, analytical genius, and lasting impact of the woman who modernized medical care and saved countless lives. Whether you are a history buff, a healthcare professional, or simply love stories of remarkable historical figures, this episode offers a fresh look at one of the 19th century’s most influential icons.
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City, the podcast about interesting dead people. I'm Alex. I'm here with my friend Kelly. How's it going, Kelly?
SPEAKER_01It's going great, man. I'm uh happy to be here recording. We're getting we're getting quite a few done, kind of uh stacking it up so that we can do a little traveling this summer.
SPEAKER_00Well, I have a good one today, and not in my uh wheelhouse, as I like to say. Oh, really? Okay, not 20th century, not a dude. Not a dude, not a no, a lady from the um mostly 19th century.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Any guesses? A lady from the 19th century. Is it uh Marie Curie?
SPEAKER_00Oh, so close. Um is it a scientist? No, no, sir. No, don't keep guessing. Let me guess. Okay, all right. She was born in 1820 in Florence, Tuscany, which is uh Italy, and died in 1910. So lived to be 90 years old, and uh died in London. And she was a Brit. Not really Italian. She was born in Italy, but not uh not Italian. Was she known for cooking? No. Oh, okay. She was uh uh what was she known for? She her um nickname was the lady with the lamp. She was named after the city she was born in. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um in Tuscany. No the city she was born in. Tuscany is the region. Right, right. The city was in Tuscany.
SPEAKER_00Right. Do you remember the name? I just told you about a minute ago.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, um Florence. Yes. Florence Nightingale. You got it. Ah, there you go.
SPEAKER_00Or the founder, father, founder of modern nursing. Now, what do you know about Florence Nightingale?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, she has almost become like one of these people that is so famous that you use her to describe somebody, you know, a real Florence Nightingale, a real Einstein, a real Mother Teresa. A real Mother Teresa, yeah, yeah. So um, I mean, she is the epitome of nursing Bob Hoover. The Bob Hoover of nursing. Uh she's the Florence Nightingale of Pilots. Um, yeah, that's but I don't know. I didn't know. I guess that name is very Nightingale sounds very British. It doesn't sound Italian, so that that tracks. Um was she part of World War I? Was she an ambulance driver?
SPEAKER_00She was she was not an ambulance driver, and not she was pre- she died in 1910, so she was not uh World War I either. Um, no, I didn't know very much about her other than I thought maybe she uh you know founded the Red Cross. So she was actually born into a very wealthy British family in Florence and named after her birth city and moved to England the year after she was born. So, like I said, she was not Italian. Her grandfather, uh her family was actually uh, although they were very wealthy, they were actually very progressive too. Her grandfather was an abolitionist, and her dad had um very progressive ideas about women's education there in the uh 19th century. So both of his daughters, uh, he had two daughters, both of them studied history and math and classical literature and philosophy, and and then in 1844, so when she was 24, she decided to be a nurse against the wishes of her mom, who just wanted to be a mother, you know. Nursing nursing back then was not um really uh a field. I mean, it wasn't I mean wasn't respected like it is today. Definitely not respected. It was um nurses did not have a great reputation, they were often untrained, they were poorly paid, they were basically just servants, you know, just fetching instruments. The field of medicine actually was pretty primitive back then. This was yeah, this was really kind of saws and leeches, right? Well, and you know, she really represents kind of that transition from from one period to the next, and and we'll we'll talk about that. Um but you know, she her with her high social status, she didn't even need to work, you know. I mean, this was not in the days of dual-income families or anything, and the only women that worked were women that needed the money or needed this to uh you know support um ailing parents or something. Um, she was also considered attractive, and her mother thought that uh, you know, you're attractive and you're wealthy. Why would you go and work?
SPEAKER_01Um that's that's what my mother said to me, by the way. She's like, she's like, Why are you still doing this podcast? You're so much better than that.
SPEAKER_00Attractive, yeah. Yeah. Um, you do have a good face for podcasts, though, Kelly.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Well, everything um that's old is is new again, and that's the same with the Crimean War, and then so the two sides were Russia on one side, and then the other side was the Ottoman Empire, you know, right, which is like the Turkish um part of the world, and then France, the UK, and then Sardinia. But back then, here's the thing is that more soldiers died back then from disease than from combat. This was right in the transition period between primitive medicine and modern medicine. So Florence Nightingale was pretty much the transition between the old world and the new world. Wow. Well, then to the rescue comes Florence Nightingale with her team of 38 nurses. She brought 38 of her uh nurses with her, and she, you know, the it would be romanticizing the story to say she came and then she cleaned everything up and everything was fine. But really, it wasn't like that. I mean, like I said, the medicine part they didn't know. But what she did, and she didn't have authority over the army, she just had authority over the nurses that she brought. But what she was obsessed with was organization and order and cleanliness, and um, and like I said, uh, and and actually statistics. She collected a lot of data, she fixed what she could. So, first thing she did was she organized the kitchen so patients got food that was edible. Now that doesn't take knowing about modern medicine to know that. That was just a person who cared, you know, who thought that these guys deserve some edible food, right? But that actually probably contributed to you know getting them food that wasn't, you know, um contaminated probably can be spoiled better health, right? Yeah, yeah. She created laundries because who wants to be sitting around in bloody clothes all the time, and I mean that in in both ways, a bloody from the uh British sense, right? Who wants to get one of their bloody clothes? Um but she created this laundry system, right? So inadvertently she was cleaning, you know, she was taking care of a lot of the stuff that they actually didn't know was gonna be helping them, but just from uh like a human rights uh human conditions, like decency perspective, right? She established supply systems and supply uh chain and and getting those warehouses cleared and making sure that that organization of stuff got to the right places. She um was obsessed about record keeping and had a focus on cleanliness. She also understood morale, and she saw these guys that were, you know, if they weren't dying in the hospital, they were pr they didn't want to go back into the field. Um she made sure they got mail, she got made sure they got reading materials, she she made their stay in the hospital worthwhile and and treated them like humans, you know.
SPEAKER_01She did all this at one hospital? Like this was all in the course of like what's the time frame here? I mean, like six three years? Wow.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot to do. But because of her father having such a progressive attitude about women and leadership and education, she never thought anything of that. She never thought there was anything she couldn't do or handle. Yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01It shows what a difference that makes, you know, what a difference he he made.
SPEAKER_00So she was called the lady with the lamp. Um, she was um the London Times got, you know, they like I said, these these this war was one of the first ones covered by newspapers. So we had war correspondents that were observing this. And the London Times said this, they said about Florence Nightingale, and she got very famous on these articles, people would write about her, and said 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. Painting this picture of this slight, slender woman walking around with her little lamp, ministering to these, you know. Now that was a lot of liberties were taken with what was really going on here. She was actually not called the lady with the lamp, she was called the lady with the hammer. The soldiers called her the lady with the hammer because she used a hammer to she used to carry a hammer around, not a lantern, not a lamp. She used to carry a hammer around with her, and she would use that hammer to break into locked storage rooms to get medicine because nobody could find the key. So she would so but the writer thought that that was unladylike to have this woman running around with a hammer, that's a man's tool. So he changed the he changed it to her walking around with a lamp and being like an angel, but actually she was a badass walking around with a hammer, breaking into breaking into things, do doing what it took to get stuff done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. She she was one of these people that asked um forgiveness instead of permission, but the results spoke for themselves, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I guess at that time, um, because of the press, the word got out. There may have been people like this before, but we might not know about them, right? It it it was rare that that these people got coverage and got to be famous for their good deeds until this time, you know, it's when that was starting. It was that convergence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. That made her famous, and she became very famous in in the UK, and she created nursing as a respectable profession. People writing about the deeds that she was doing and the good heart that she had. And when she went back to England in 1956, when that war was over, she was one of the most famous wit women in Britain. Um and she started this thing called the Nightingale Fund that um that was a charity for um for um for teach training new people to be nurses, and people donated the the average British people donate a lot of money to that, and she used that money to transform nursing into something similar to what we know it today. She in 1960 or 1860, she founded the uh Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas Hospital. Um, and like I mentioned before that, there were they didn't have a good reputation, but she demanded discipline and morals and cleanliness. She demanded nurses be observant and dedicated to patient care, and she called it the Nightingale system that nursing was a caring profession for for, and there were I think almost all women at the time that went into uh nursing, but it became a very respected respectable field. She was also obsessed with when she came back with the way hospitals were built. What it is was about the environment of a hospital that you could improve patient care by the way something was built. Like how far away do we put the beds? Where do we where do we put the windows? You know, I took a class in college uh called environmental psychology that was about this kind of stuff. It was about just how do you design buildings and cities and courtyards and things like that, housing projects to make people's uh experience um less stressful and healthier. Yeah. How do you design a hospital for the air to have better circulation? And where do you put the toilets? And I mean, there were in the private rooms back then. And how how do you connect the kitchens? You know, where how far do you put the food away from things that are like you know, people being operated on and all that kind of stuff? We take it for granted now. But she was like at ground zero of this kind of stuff, making this she in popularized what we call today the pavilion hospital. Have you heard of like sometimes a hospital be called a pavilion?
SPEAKER_01I've not heard of that, but I can envision you walk in and there's a big open, airy space in the middle, and then there's rooms all around. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
SPEAKER_00You've never you've never heard a hospital called a pavilion? No, no, I've not heard that. A lot of hospitals today are called pavilions. And you're right. There's there were these like picture like a long ward with like really natural light and really good ventilation, maybe high ceilings and maybe a big airy lobby or something like that, and and with different wards from different with different specialties, and just order, you know, order and not and not chaos. She actually started all that stuff. Well, um, she spent the rest of her life writing letters, lots of letters, probably sometimes some people say like 10,000 letters to like military leaders, um, talking about ways to improve field hospitals, and you know, she was very sick um uh most of her uh latter part of her life. She lived to be 90, but most of that life she lived in in poor health, she was confined to her bed. She basically worked at home, which is what we'd call that today, like writing letters. But for somebody who lived 150 years ago, she was actually pretty modern. You know, she was the first woman to get the order of merit. Uh, the order of merit is one of the highest um honors that you can get in the UK. Um, this is a cool thing. Have you heard of the Order of Merit?
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, I think is it sort of like being knighted almost?
SPEAKER_00Uh kind of one of those it is one of those things, but it's for people in in science, arts, military, or public service. They started that in 1903 by uh King Edward, and so she was one of the first people to get it. She was oh okay, she may have been one of the first woman to get it. Um, and um she got it, so he started it in 1903, she got it in 1907, so she didn't get it posthumously, she got to enjoy it. Wow, but the coolest thing about the Order of Merit that still applies is there can only be 234 living members of the Order of Merit at any one time.
SPEAKER_01Someone has to die in order for someone else to get it.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So it can't get bloated. There's always 234 people that are living that have the I think that's really cool. I think we should we should adopt that with um other awards that that we give that we're not giving any out until we have room for this. I mean, think about how like the rock and roll hall of fame would be if it was full and then you just had to wait for all of Leonard Skinner to go before you put anyone else?
SPEAKER_01That could take decades. Well, and and and really, you know, famous people dying is good for us. So, you know, we we we support that fully.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that when we get to 234 episodes we should um wait wait for uh someone else to die?
SPEAKER_01I mean, how does that work for us? The nice thing is I think what that does, like you said, it doesn't, it it's not bloated and also it keeps the uh people who receive the award current, right? So what what that does is it isn't just you know, it's like as as someone passes, someone else takes their place, and that person is going to be well known, more well known to the public at that time, right? Because they say like two generations back, unless you're famous, most people don't know who you were.
SPEAKER_00I think it would be cool if the person, I guess you couldn't really do this because nobody knows when they're about to go, but if the person who goes out gets to pick the next one who goes in, but I guess you really can't do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, unless you unless you unless you pick them in advance, you know, you're like, okay, when I go, this this is my successor. It's it's like it's like a new king.
SPEAKER_00Icebucket challenge where you dominate somebody.
SPEAKER_01So did did Florence Nightingale have any family? Did she marry? Did she have any children, or did she dedicate her entire life to her career?
SPEAKER_00She did not. She never married. That she had that proposal when she was younger, dedicated her career to nursing. She turned down um burial at Westminster Abbey when she was sick. They offered that to her, and um she said uh no. Um I think the the cool part that is she absolutely changed medicine as much as you know uh anybody without discovering any diseases, without discovering any treatments, without inventing you know uh artificial heart or anything like that, absolutely changed medicine to the modern to what we see today. Um, she wasn't just a lady with a lamp, she um she was the lady that made hospitals stop killing people, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. So so if we're in the hospital, uh we can thank her for the good food, the clean linens, you know, all the things that we take for granted these days.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That's my story on Florence Nightingale in a candlelit ward she came.
SPEAKER_03Quiet steps a steady frame, piles of pain, and rooms undone. She saw the mess and got to work. She counted the best, she counted the dead, she counted on the second step The line by the line, she changed the line for the body.
SPEAKER_02With a land, the hostile home. Because you begin.
