The study of nursing had an irresistible attraction for her. Few people in England at that time valued nursing. Florence Nightingale was convinced that indifference arose from the all but absolute ignorance of what nursing should be, and she set herself to acquire the necessary knowledge to enable her to carry it out in the very best and most scientific way. She never lost an opportunity of visiting a hospital, either at home or abroad. She gave up the life of so-called "pleasure," which it was then considered a young woman of her position ought to lead, and after having very carefully examined innumerable nursing institutions at home and abroad, at length went to the well-known Pastor Fliedner's Deaconesses, at Kaiserswerth, where she remained for several months. After leaving Kaiserswerth, Miss Nightingale was for a while with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, in Paris, so anxious was she to see how nursing was carried on under many different systems. It was during 1851, the year of the first Great Exhibition, that she was thus fitting herself practically for the great task that lay before her in the not very distant future. On her return to England, Miss Nightingale found a patient that required all her time and help of every kind. This patient was none other than the Sanatorium in Harley Street for gentlewomen of limited means. Into the saving of this valuable institution Miss Nightingale threw all her energy, and for two or three years, hidden away from the outside world, she was working day and night for her poor suffering ladies, until at length she was able to feel that the Sanatorium was not only in good health, but on the high road to permanent success. Florence Nightingale's own health, however, gave way under the long-continued strain of anxiety and fatigue; she was obliged to leave the invalids for whom she had done so much, and go home for the rest and change she so sorely needed. Now, while Miss Nightingale had been quietly getting "Harley Street" into working order, the gravest and most terrible changes had taken place in the affairs of the nation, and not only in those of England, but in those of the whole of Europe. In 1851, when the first Great Exhibition was opened, all was peace--the long peace of forty years was still unbroken--people said it never was to be broken again, and that wars and rumors of wars had come to an end. So much for human foreknowledge. By the autumn of 1854, the horrors of the Crimean war had reached their climax. The _Times_ was full, day by day, of the most thrilling and appalling descriptions of the hideous sufferings of our brave men--sufferings caused quite as much by the utter breakdown of the sanitary administration as by even the deadly battles and trenchwork; while every post was bringing agonizing private letters appealing for help.