Florence Nightingale

山东庆云县第一中学 撒 栋

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难词探意

1. superintendent /,suːpərɪn'tendənt/ n. 主管人

2. typhoid /'taɪfɔɪd/ n. 伤寒

3. scrub /skrʌb/ v. 擦洗；刷洗

Florence Nightingale just wanted to help. As a young woman in England in the 1840s, she saw how hard it was for poor people to get help when they were sick. She wanted to be a nurse, but her rich parents thought that the job was beneath her, and that she should instead marry a wealthy man. Different from most women of her time, she went to Germany to study nursing.

Born on May 12, 1820, Nightingale was smart and observant.At her first job in the early 1850s, caring for sick teachers in London, England, she became thesuperintendentafter quickly showing her talent for helping the sick get better. It was also when she developed ideas that would change healthcare forever.

The mostly male doctors of the day focused on treating the diseases patients came into the hospital with, and not necessarily on how the diseases spread. But while volunteering at a hospital during a cholera outbreak, Nightingale noticed that people were catching and spreading diseases inside the hospital itself. It was then that she realized that dirty conditions inside hospitals might be spreading diseases, and that if hospitals were cleaner, patients might be safer.

In 1853, when the Crimean War broke out, Nightingale was asked to lead a team of 38 nurses at the British military hospital in Constantinople. When she arrived, she was shocked to discover that more soldiers were dying from infectious diseases liketyphoidand cholera than from battle wounds.Taking charge, she had the hospitalscrubbed, then created diagrams and graphs to show that if hospitals were cleaner, fewer people would die. According to some sources, because of her efforts the hospital's death rate dropped from about 40 percent to around 2 percent.

The Lady With the Lamp—soldiers' nickname for her because of her habit of walking dark hallways to care for them—returned to England after the war ended in 1856. Two years later she became the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society for her use of graphs in healthcare, and in 1860 she founded the Nightingale Home and Training School for Nurses to properly train healthcare workers.

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1. What can we know about Florence Nightingale according to the text?

A. She was born in a poor family.

B. She married a wealthy man.

C. She held fast to her dream.

D. She gained support from her parents to become a nurse.

2. When did Nightingale begin noticing the importance of conditions in hospitals?

A. When the Crimean War broke out.

B. When she set up a training school.

C. When she cared for sick teachers in London.

D. When she was a volunteer during a cholera break.

3. What did Nightingale find in the British Military hospital?

A. The death rate was extremely high.

B. Many male doctors could carry diseases.

C. More soldiers died from infectious diseases.

D. The healthcare was very good in the hospital.

4. What did the soldiers think of Nightingale?

A. Brave. B. Considerate.

C. Energetic. D. Intelligent.