Florence Nightingale had everything Victorian riches could offer, but behind her porcelain skin and delicately pursed lips was a girl tortured. When she was 17 years old, God called Florence to ease the suffering of mankind. She was an unlikely candidate, given her privileged upbringing. Florence wanted to be a nurse. A menial job, her mother explained to her, meant for a lower class of women and even a lower set of morals. Young Florence's heart broke.

At 25 years of age, a suitable suitor finally arrived, to everyone's relief. Florence was in love, and her suitor met her in intellect and satisfied her passion. He asked for her hand in marriage. Florence faced a choice that very few are blessed to face. She ultimately rejected her love's proposal, and her disheartened parents finally relented and allowed her to study nursing in Germany.

In 1853, Europe was embroiled in the Crimean War, and Florence was commissioned to serve there. Her dreams were finally coming true.

The first day in the military hospital, the impeccably clean Florence stepped out of her carriage to the smell of death and worse. She trudged through an inch deep of human waste to examine a man with yellow pus festering from a gunshot wound. Most deaths were not from wounds, but from diseases contracted in the hospital where beds lay side by side for as far as the eye could see.

Appalled by the horrifying accommodations, Florence demanded to see the head doctor, an English doctor of renown. He brushed her aside repeatedly until she could no longer abide. Using her social status, Florence contacted a prominent newspaper writer who told the story of her hospital to all England. The nation was outraged.

She was quickly given control of the hospital --- and began to scrub. She scrubbed some of the most vile disease and waste from the floor of the hospital barracks, which was four miles in length. When she demanded more supplies from England, she received them.

Never tiring, Florence cleaned men, dressed their battle wounds and administered from bed to bed, speaking softly, like an angel. Carrying a lamp through the night to comfort the sleepless, her femininity, her grace, multiplied by her mission, grit and virtue, changed the social stigma attached to nurses. Florence gave the men hope to live --- and live they did. The death rate fell from 42 percent to 22 percent per thousand.

To those that feared death because of a life hard lived, Florence Nightingale said the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was or could ever imagine.