Nursing itself has its roots in the concept of motherhood as involving a woman's care for her children. Thus, any mother could be a nurse. Gradually, though, nursing developed into a profession as more women dedicated themselves to not only child care, but to the well-being of adults, families and communities. Nurses also began to require knowledge of medicine as professional nursing expanded.
Although English nurse Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) did not invent nursing, she became --- and has remained --- the field's central and most visible historic figure. She is best known for her work during the Crimean War that lasted from 1853 to 1856, and she is credited by many for decreasing the death toll among the wounded soldiers she cared for. After the war, Nightingale founded the first professional nursing school, at London's St. Thomas Hospital (1860). Today, it is known as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College, London.
The University of Manchester developed the first nursing degree in the United Kingdom. Formerly the School of Nursing Studies, the nursing degree-granting institution merged with another to create the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work in 1996.
With the consultation of Nightingale, a School of Nursing (along with a Hospital) was opened at Johns Hopkins University in 1889. The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was one of the first nursing institutions in the United States. It led the nation in the creation of the nursing profession's organizational structure, and its founders --- Isabel Hampton, M. Adelaide Nutting and Lavinia Dock --- founded the National League of Nursing Education and helped launch the American Nurses Association.
In recent years, there have been some people who contend that Florence Nightingale is an outdated and embellished icon of nursing, claiming that she spent only a third of her life in the field, and that the death toll of wounded Crimean War soldiers actually rose rather than fell under her watch. Furthermore, the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth, Germany --- a small hospital that included a nursing training school for deaconesses --- is arguably the forerunner of the nursing institutions of the United Kingdom and the United States.