‘You what?’ her mother screamed across the dining-room table. The fire in her mother's voice matched the fire in the nearby family hearth. ‘How could you possibly bring ruin on the name of this good family?’ A young Florence Nightingale outwardly cringed at the outburst.

‘I will not have my daughter taking on the role of a chamber-pot maid!’ her father roared in response to his wife. ‘And in a hospital, for God's sake!’ He stormed out of the room, his dinner untouched. Florence, suffering the steely glares of the rest of her family, grew short of breath. She began to feel weak.

‘see what you've done to your father …’ her mother started. And then, noticing her daughter's sudden frailty, ‘And here we go again, with yet another famous dizzy spell. If you cannot stand up to your family, how will you stand up to a doctor?’

Florence Nightingale stumbled out of her chair and virtually crawled to her bedroom. Since she had announced to her wealthy family her intentions of becoming a nurse, there had been immediate and non-stop conflict. This shortness of breath and heart palpitation had started just as suddenly. Socially, nursing was the closest thing to low-born slavery the elder Nightingales could conceive. To Florence, it was the only thing she wanted to do.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, her family's objections only solidified her resolve.