It is hard to believe that it is almost 150 years since Florence Nightingale penned her seminal work on nursing. She was the first modern nurse, the first to recognise the connection between the dirt of the hospital and the number of deaths therein. It is a sad fact that more soldiers died in the Crimea in British hospitals than died on the battlefields of Sevastopol, Balaklava and the rest of the Black Sea peninsula. Florence Nightingale's practical and eminently sensible advice still rings true today and her Notes on Nursing should be recommended reading for any modern day nurse.