Florence Nightingale was not a randomly chosen figure. The argument was about what the point is of making heroes out of people. The thing is, when Florence first got to the Crimea, she was pretty rubbish at keeping folk alive, but she promoted the cause relentlessly back at home. It was her use of that celebrity that eventually got money and resources out to the Crimea and that saved more lives there than her medical skills did at the time.

In the long run, by her use of statistics, she invented modern nursing and much of the practice of evidence based medicine, but she got started by establishing a name for herself.