What is the importance of Florence Nightingale as noted in the nonfiction book, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses?

Florence Nightingale is the nurse credited with defining the contemporary image of the profession. As an upper-class woman, Nightingale's image of nursing not only imposed classist values on the profession, it also built the idea of nursing on gendered stereotypes. Nursing in the Nightingale image is an extension of "natural" female roles of mothering, nurturing, and care taking. As such, the Nightingale nurse embodies "the very spirit of femininity as defined by sexist Victorian society" and Nightingale herself becomes a symbol for nursing as a gendered profession which epitomizes that Victorian feminine ideal.