The Founder of Modern Nursing and Her Victorian Pie Charts

Originally Published June 20, 2022

Florence Nightingale, a social reformer, scientist, researcher, and statistician named after her hometown in Italy, wrote a report on the medical failings during the Crimean War with over 900 pages. If that doesn’t keep you at the edge of your seat, the reasons reek why Florence was never a woman’s name until this Lady With The Lamp was recognized as a legend.

Early on, Nightingale was never tone-deaf about the needy. She could hear a pin-drop of suffering from a mile away. As an Aristocrat, she was only expected to marry a rich gentleman instead of going to work, let alone going to university. This is why at a very young age, she doubted herself for wanting things that other upper-middle-class women did not want. Through rigorous education in maths, science, philosophy, history, and classics together with the ability to speak Italian, Greek, and Latin, Florence had the audacity to turn down marriage proposals. She wrapped her head around the idea that affluence and public service are hardly skewered for a balancing act. Her parents wanted to distract her so she was sent on a Euro Tour. It backfired as she only learned more from the pundits of the earth.

With only 3 months of training in nursing, Nightingale changed the world forever. Before her stint, hospitals were outright precarious as nursing was not a profession. It was either a task for nuns or a job for prostitutes and inept uneducated drunkards. Not long after landing a job, she got so good at it that when a conflict between Russia and Turkey broke out, she was summoned to serve a vital role in the Crimean War. A curveball that was one for the books as women were not allowed to enter military hospitals before. Only 38 out of the 200 nurses who applied to join her team qualified.

In shock after witnessing soldiers from the frontline lying on their own excrement with rats and fleas around, she ordered her team to scrub the overcrowded and understaffed hospital from floor to ceiling. She also established a kitchen and a laundry as she knew that hygiene, sanitation, nutrition, and ventilation were essential. She roamed 20 hours a day with a lantern from room to room ministering patient after patient from night to day. They handed clean sheets, sent sympathy letters to the families, unclogged toilets, replaced soiled bandages, and bathed the patients knowing how important nursing is.

Her practice lowered the mortality rate from 10% to 2%. She believed that big data is God's work; it was the measure of her purpose. Since infographics cannot be ignored, she exhibited numbers through pictures. Showing that more patients were dying from infection than from wounds, she established formal reports through statistical coxcomb charts that will later become famous as Nightingale Rose Diagram or Polar-Area Diagram.

Proving that 16K of the 18K deaths were from preventable diseases—not the battle, she was the first woman to receive the order of merit from King Edward. She was also given the “Nightingale Jewel” representing a Royal Red Cross from the queen. Her perseverance was believed to have evolved in UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The founder of the Red Cross even admitted that Florence was one of the inspirations why he established the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Military officers were alarmed by her influence but her patients supported him. Over £44K was raised to fund the Nightingale Training School. Her 1st book in 1860 entitled, “Notes on Nursing” sold more than 15K copies in 1 month. She also became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society writing over 150 books, pamphlets, and reports on health-related issues. Florence was the author of “Cassandra”, a book on how men label intelligent women as irrelevant. Last May 12 of 2022, marked the 202nd anniversary of Nightingale’s birth—a date yearly celebrated as International Nurses’ Day. As the saying goes, care for 1 person, that's love. Care for 100 people, that's nursing. You can find Florence Nightingale’s one and only voice recording online—captured by Thomas Edison.

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