An exhibition on Florence Nightingale which marks 200 years since her birth will shine a spotlight on her as an older woman.
Nightingale is often pictured in her 30s, when she nursed wounded soldiers in the Crimean war.
The exhibition, in the museum that bears her name in the grounds of St Thomas’ hospital in London, aims to also remember the triumphs of the more mature woman.
Nightingale became known during the war as the Lady With the Lamp because she would check British soldiers throughout the night.
The Florence Nightingale Museum exhibition will explore the next 50 years of her life, when she revolutionised nursing and transformed healthcare.
She also suffered physical illness and depression, now thought to have been post-traumatic stress disorder.
Highlights will include her famous lamp – a Turkish lantern she carried during the war – and a recording of Nightingale’s voice when she was in her 70s.
Other items include a photograph showing her in bed at the age of 86, four years before she died at the age of 90, her medicine chest containing glass jars of homemade remedies, and her writing case.
The design of St Thomas’ hospital was hugely influenced by Nightingale and it opened the first Nightingale School for training nurses in her honour in 1860.
