Hand-crafted from start to finish, this stamped necklace features a quote from Florence Nightingale, "Never give nor take an excuse," curving around a winged staff with two twining serpents, known as a caduceus or the Staff of Hermes.

Some sources say that the original complete quote from Nightingale was "I attribute my success to this - I never gave nor took any excuse." Nightingale was a British nurse in the mid-1800s and is heralded as the mother of modern nursing. She was also a social reformer, statistician, and prolific writer, usually about health-related issues and education. We decided to create this pendant as homage to nurses and medical workers, because while geographical exploration and discovery are at the heart of our brand, humanity wouldn't have gotten very far without healthcare and modern medicine. Nightingale's quote speaks to the perseverance, skill, and care necessary in the healthcare field, and we honor the strength exhibited by those healers and caretakers.

The winged and serpent-twined staff was carried by Hermes, the Greek messenger god, as a symbol of peace and is similar to the Rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. The snake appears in both emblems as a sign of fertility and pharmacology, as snakes possess an antivenom against their own poison, carrying the curse and the cure in one body. The caduceus was adopted in modern times as a symbol of the physician, and later as the emblem of the U.S. Army Medical Corps.