These women went above and beyond for the field of nursing. They served in wars, broke down racial barriers, and campaigned for women’s rights. They have become role models for women everywhere, not just nurses. However, nurses can be especially proud to share a title with these ten ladies.

1. Florence Nightingale
2. Margaret Sanger
3. Clara Barton
4. Mary Eliza Mahoney
5. Anna Caroline Maxwell
6. Dorothea Lynde Dix
7. Ellen Dougherty
8. Mabel Keaton Staupers
9. Linda Richards
10. Claire Bertschinger

1. Florence Nightingale

“The Lady with the Lamp” is the quintessential nurse figure. She cared for the poor and distressed, and became an advocate for improving medical conditions for everyone. In her early life, Nightingale mentored other nurses, known as Nightingale Probationers, who then went to on also work to create safer, healthier hospitals.

In 1894, Nightingale trained 38 volunteer nurses who served in the Crimean War. These nurses tended to the wounded soldiers and sent reports back regarding the status of the troops. Nightingale and her nurses reformed the hospital so that clean equipment was always available and reorganized patient care. Nightingale soon realized that many of the soldiers were dying because of unsanitary living conditions, and, after the war, she worked to improve living conditions.

While she was at war, the Florence Nightingale Fund for the Training of Nurses was established in her honor. After the war, Nightingale wrote Notes on Nursing and opened the Women’s Medical College with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

International Nurses Day is celebrated on Nightingale’s birthday, May 12, each year.

Next up: Activist, Margaret Sanger…

We here at Scrubs are not only longtime fans of Lake Wobegon (where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”) but also of The Writer’s Almanac, in which Keillor imparts brief facts and poetry related to each day’s date.

Here are some entertaining references to nurses that we’ve selected from the Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. Listen to them, then share them with your friends. Some are truly inspirational, some are borderline silly, but they are all entertaining!

First, Garrison Keillor welcomes his nurses to his radio show after his heart operation.

That all our basic convictions must be tested and transmuted in the crucible of experience—and sometimes the more bitter the experience, the more valid the purified belief.

As a child, one of a large family, I learned that the thing I did best was the thing I liked to do.

This realization of doing and getting results was what I have later called an awakening consciousness.

There is an old Indian proverb which has inspired me in the work of my adult life. “Build thou beyond thyself, but first be sure that thou thyself be strong and healthy in body and mind.” Yes, to build, to work, to plan to do something, not for yourself, not for your own benefit, but “beyond thyself”—and when this idea permeates the mind you begin to think in terms of a future. I began to think of a world beyond myself when I first took an interest in nursing the sick.

As a nurse, I was in contact with the ill and the infirm. I knew something about the health and disease of bodies, but for a long time I was baffled at the tremendous personal problems of life, of marriage, of living, and of just being. Here indeed was a challenge to “build beyond thyself.” But where was I to begin? I found the answer at every door. I began to believe there was something I could do toward increasing an understanding of these basic human problems. To build beyond myself I must first tap all inner resources of stamina, of courage, of resolution within myself. I was prepared to face opposition, even ridicule, denunciation. But I had also to prepare myself, in defense of these unpopular beliefs; I had to prepare myself to face courts and even prisons. But I resolved to stand up, alone if necessary, against all the entrenched forces which opposed me.

I started my battle some 40 years ago. The women and mothers whom I wanted to help also wanted to help me. They, too, wanted to build beyond the self, in creating healthy children and bringing them up in life to be happy and useful citizens. I believed it was my duty to place motherhood on a higher level than enslavement and accident. I was convinced we must care about people; we must reach out to help them in their despair.

For these beliefs I was denounced, arrested. I was in and out of police courts and higher courts, and indictments hung over my life for several years. But nothing could alter my beliefs. Because I saw these as truths, and I stubbornly stuck to my convictions.

No matter what it may cost in health, in misunderstanding, in sacrifice, something had to be done, and I felt that I was called by the force of circumstance to do it. Because of my philosophy and my work, my life has been enriched and full. My interests have expanded from local conditions and needs to a world horizon, where peace on earth may be achieved when children are wanted before they are conceived. A new consciousness will take place, a new race will be born to bring peace on earth. This belief has withstood the crucible of my life’s joyous struggle. It remains my basic belief today.

This I believe—at the end as at the beginning of my long crusade for the future of the human race.

Margaret Sanger was the founder and president of the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood. She organized the first World Population Conference in Geneva in 1927. Even into her 80s, Sanger traveled the world helping establish birth control clinics.

“When Children Are Wanted,” written by Margaret Sanger, circa 1954. From the book This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman. Copyright © 2006 by This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted by arrangement with This I Believe, Inc.

You can submit your own essay here.

[Main Image: Margaret Sanger]

We’ve all been regaled with stories about Florence Nightingale, the most recognizable nurse in the American consciousness and throughout the world.  Here are the stories behind some other famous nurses, some you may recognize, others you may have heard about but will be surprised to find were nurses at all.

1. Mary Todd Lincoln
2. ‘War’s End Kiss’ Nurse
3. Walt Whitman
4. Edith Cavell
5. Lillian Carter
6. Margaret Sanger

1. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln was the very first wife of an American president to carry the title First Lady.  She was quite a controversial figure during her time and biographies have proliferated about her through the decades.  What is often overlooked in these many accounts is her contribution as a volunteer nurse in Union hospitals during the Civil War.  She also helped freed slaves by giving them clothing and treatment and supported her husband in the creation of the Proclamation of Independence.

Continue to the most kissable nurse in the world…