Florence Nightingale was a nurse, and is primarily remembered for being an advocate for improved sanitary conditions in British Army hospitals. Nightingale was already a nurse and hospital superintendent in London when the Crimean War broke out in the 1850s. She went to the Crimea to work in the army hospitals there, and was shocked by the unsanitary conditions there. She pushed for Army regulations to enforce better practices in the hospitals and for more funds, both from the Army and from donors back in England, to provide for the wounded and the sick. After the war, she wrote a firsthand account of her experiences in the Crimea, and promoted better training for British nurses, both in the military and in civilian hospitals. Her successes were many, and her contributions went far beyond improving conditions in combat hospitals. She is in large part responsible for beginning reforms that would lead to the professionalization of nursing.