Florence Nightingale was the indisputable heroine of the Crimean War during the conflict and after. Though she treated the cholera, her greatest success came in the realm of public opinion. The press bathed Nightingale, an unusually capable and energetic professional, in sentiment. Vaulted to celebrity, the Lady with the Lamp found her place in poems and on porcelain. Postwar labors in public health, nursing, and statistics across her long life had farther reaching effects. Yet, the image of the young Nightingale endured. She was the subject of statues, pageants, and radio shows; she became the emblem of the nursing profession. Complex and malleable, Nightingale was an icon of Englishness and a global heroine. She was an embodiment of Victorianism and a modernizing force. She inspired loyal proponents and fierce detractors. Nightingale bedeviled the army’s medical men in her lifetime; she attracted ire from modernist critics after her death. The greatest rebuke came from the British nursing profession; it discarded Nightingale as its emblem in favor of more current role models in 1989. This most enduring Victorian heroine was ultimately out of step with contemporary Britain.

The year 2020 provides evidence of the Crimea’s continued relevance in troubled times. In Britain, 2020 marks the moment that Brexit was finally done. Several critics found resonance in the Charge of the Light Brigade and the cult around it, which valorized heroic failure. Like the officers of the Light Brigade, the Tory leadership blundered as it led the nation into the abyss. In Britain and beyond, 2020 will be remembered as the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Like the battle against the cholera in the Crimea, the British struggle against the virus was marred by mismanagement. In response, the names of Nightingale and Seacole found their ways onto makeshift hospitals and rehabilitation centers. And, as in the Crimea, military men – here, centenarians whose youths overlapped with the longest-lived of the Victorian generation – captured the hearts of the public. Most notable was Captain Tom Moore, whose compassion and particular variety of courage spurred him, at the age of 100, to raise money for the NHS before dying a celebrity in 2021. Even now, the Crimean War’s long afterlife provides touchstones for success, failure, and hope.

The traditional stereotypical image of a nurse is closely linked to that of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing who established a training system to teach nurses how to be completely dedicated to the tasks of care, regardless of personal needs; to be dependent upon and deferential to authorities such as medical doctors and matron supervisors; and how to comport with modesty and femininity. Of course, contemporary nursing is no longer a profession exclusively female, nor does nursing work predominantly involve dependent actions. However, these outdated ideas remain strong in the minds of the public and are often repeated in popular culture.

The portrayal of nurses in the media has a powerful effect on perception by the public, clients and within themselves (Stanley et al. 2019). Sadly, their public image may not correspond with personal reality (Rauen et al. 2016), and this is the central argument in this chapter.

Luckily for nursing, we have overwhelmingly been imaged as good – helpful, caring, ethical and practical. This chapter explored the evolution of the nursing profession and consider the effect of image on contemporary nursing. It invites you to reflect on whether these public perceptions have influenced you, your decision to be a nurse and your future actions.

Florence Nightingale – widely known as the Lady with the Lamp – is internationally celebrated as the founder of modern nursing. Indeed, Nightingale instituted revolutionary hygienic reforms both during and after the calamitous Crimean War, in which more British troops died from infectious disease than from battle wounds. Far less appreciated is Nightingale’s pivotal role as an innovator in data visualization – a groundbreaking rhetorical system permitting data “to speak for themselves.” How Nightingale evolved from her privileged upbringing as the daughter of a wealthy landed family to a champion of progressive health care reform is an astonishing story – one involving a host of influential collaborators and acquaintances at the highest levels of mathematics and government. Nightingale’s passionate and persuasive powers proved highly successful in contrast to the clumsy efforts of another hygienic reformer, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis. Nightingale’s success confirms Louis Pasteur’s quotation: “chance favors only the prepared mind.”