Ms Perry said nurses today - just like Florence Nightingale - recognised the importance of collecting data.

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Back in the 1850s Florence Nightingale was complaining about the presence of bed sores, saying they represented a failure of nursing.

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Mr Dale, who was born in York but lived many years in Scotland, has now been awarded the Florence Nightingale medal.

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But would Florence Nightingale give Plan B to a victim of rape?

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Dorothea Dix of the American Sanitary Commission modelled military hospitals in and around Washington, DC, on Florence Nightingale's hospitals in the Crimea.

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In 1854, Florence Nightingale and a team of 38 nurses arrived in the Crimea to set up a hospital for British troops at Scutari.

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Like Florence Nightingale before him, what gives his work its persuasive force is not just rock-solid data and beautiful graphics but his personal passion and enthusiasm.

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Florence Nightingale was possessed by a particular concern.

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The second pavilion, 'The Calling', reflecting Florence's underlying belief in her call to God's service, recreates the climax of Nightingale's life: her experiences during the Crimean War in the years 1854 to 1856, when she led a Government-sponsored party of nurses to the military hospitals at Scutari on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, and then to the Crimea itself, and in so doing became a national heroine.

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