Lady with the lamp

Origin of: Lady with the lamp

Lady with the lamp

Almost everyone knows this refers to Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) the famous nurse who tended the wounded and the infirm during the Crimean War. The source is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) called Santa Filomena (1858), in which he refers to Florence Nightingale as “A lady with a lamp". The poem was immensely popular and Florence Nightingale became synonymous with Longfellow’s words.