Nursing has come a long way since the early 19th century, when nurses were given no training or even pay for the work they did. But one woman, known as the Lady with the Lamp, changed all that.

Born in 1820, Florence Nightingale began nursing from a young age, and by 1853, she was made superintendent of a London-based women’s hospital. But it was the strict hygiene measures she enforced during the Crimean War that changed the face of healthcare. After pushing for sanitation in hospitals and training many other nurses, the mortality rate of admitted patients dropped from 42% to just 2%. Not only that, but long after the war was over, she pushed the government to reduce sewage in the streets, helping to increase Britain’s life expectancy by 20 years.