You know, Florence Nightingale was not the only nurse who achieved some sort of place in history. And some nurses, who feel that Nightingale did her best to destroy nursing as a profession (even though she is credited as being the founder of modern nursing), would prefer to see other role models.

Enter Virginia Henderson. Definitely not a household name, and not likely to be one, unless you’re either a nursing history buff or a librarian, or a combination of the two. But Henderson was a modern nurse, who tried to free herself and nurses from the “Nightingalesque” model, or at least, what was assumed to be the Nightingale mode of nursing.

Her famous definition of nursing was one of the first statements clearly delineating nursing from medicine. In 1966 she wrote:

“The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible.” She was one of the first nurses to point out that nursing does not consist of merely following physician’s orders.

She was a pioneer nurse educator, a prolific writer, and a staunch advocate of libraries, and Henderson believed that her most important contribution was compiling the Nursing Studies Index, which listed all documented writings on nursing produced between 1900 and 1959.

Virginia Henderson was born on this date in 1897, and died in 1996. What a lifespan. Imagine being around for the historic Wright Brothers first flight, and then being around for the first visit into space…to say nothing of the changes in healthcare that she witnessed, both good and bad.