Florence Nightingale

Wealthy young woman who insisted on a nursing vocation against family expectations; took thirty-eight nurses to the Crimean War; found wounded soldiers dying from infection in unwashed wards; reformed sanitation, kept ledgers proving the change; her statistics changed medical practice for a century. Restoration path: Take the wards as you find them; reform sanitation against resistance; keep ledgers so the change is provable. Markers: resists family expectations for vocation; arrives at the broken wards; systematizes hygiene before germ theory was popular; keeps the data; statistics persuade afterwards — Florence Nightingale, British, 1820-1910 (History)