Nursing is an art

Nursing is an art:
and if it is to be made an art,
It requires an exclusive devotion
as hard a preparation,
as any painter's or sculptor's work;
for what is the having to do with
dead canvas or dead marble,
compared with having to do
with the living body,
the temple of God's spirit?
It is one of the Fine Arts:
I had almost said,
the finest of Fine Arts.

- Florence Nightingale