section_path: Crimean War/The Lady with the Lamp
section_name: The Lady with the Lamp
paragraph_text: The Lady with the Lamp
  
  During the Crimean War, Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" from a phrase in a report in The Times:
  
  She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
  
  The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":
  
  Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.
  
  Nightingale was nicknamed "the lady with the hammer" by the troops after using a hammer to break into locked storage to access medicine to treat the wounded. However, Russell thought the behaviour was unladylike, and invented an alternative, leading to "The Lady with the Lamp".