British nurse, statistician, and social reformer, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) went from saving wounded soldiers in the Crimean War to reforming the whole health system through nursing.
By 1858 she was bedridden and she would be so for the rest of her life, but she conducted her work from her bed, advocating health care reform, meeting distinguished visitors, and publishing her writings
The idea of visualizing data is old (!)
The idea of visualizing data is old: After all, that’s what a map is—a representation of geographic information—and we’ve had maps for about 8,000 years. But it was rare to graph anything other than geography. Only a few examples exist: Around the 11th century, a now-anonymous scribe created a chart of how the planets moved through the sky. By the 18th century, scientists were warming to the idea of arranging knowledge visually. The British polymath Joseph Priestley produced a “Chart of Biography,” plotting the lives of about 2,000 historical figures on a timeline. A picture, he argued, conveyed the information “with more exactness, and in much less time, than it [would take] by reading.”
Florence groundbreaking story
Nineteenth-century British society considered nursing a degrading occupation, often associated with drunkenness, squalor, and promiscuity. After years of denials from her mother, Nightingale took an important step toward fulfilling her dream. Her contribution didn’t stop in sorting data in columns; she went one step further to make these digits understandable for the people.
In the summer of 1856 Florence Nightingale sailed home from war furious. As the nursing administrator of a sprawling British Army hospital network, she had witnessed thousands of sick soldiers endure agony in filthy wards. An entire fighting force had been effectively lost to disease and infection. The “horrors of war,” Nightingale realized, were inflicted by more than enemy bullets.
Nightingale had earned the moniker “Lady with the Lamp” by making night rounds on patients, illuminated by a paper lantern. She was serving in the Crimean War, where Britain fought alongside France against the Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire. The causes of the soldiers’ torment were numerous: incompetent officers, meager supplies, inadequate shelters, overcrowded hospitals and cruel medical practices.
The poor quality of army data made it impossible to know exactly how soldiers died. Patient outcomes varied depending on whether you asked the officer who lost fighters, the ferryman who shuttled the sick, the doctor who treated invalids or the adjutant who buried bodies.
Nightingale had to persuade people with common understanding but uncommon standing. Her prime target throughout this effort was the head of the British Army, Queen Victoria. She worked 20-hour days, mostly behind the scenes, writing letters, wrangling data and publishing anonymously. She did not do it alone—a circle of experts, including statesmen, statisticians and scientists, united with her to break the policy makers’ inertia and ineptitude.
Nightingale’s stories showcased how poor sanitation and overcrowding caused unnecessary death. She constructed her arguments from easy-to-understand comparisons. Her graphics made it impossible to deny the realities represented by the data: army administration needed dramatic reform.
Her most famous visualization was one she produced early on: a rose chart of deaths in the British Army in Crimea and their causes. It demonstrated, through the color scheme and patterns, that a reduction in hospital deaths would lead to thousands of lives saved.
As a result of these efforts, hygiene within the army’s hospitals improved dramatically. By the end of the 19th century, their average mortality rates had fallen to half of those in civilian hospitals, where beforehand it had been consistently higher. Nightingale would go on to use her influence and passion for data to drive healthcare reforms across the world and in a variety of settings, from maternity wards in India to doctors’ tents in the American Civil War.
“Printed tables and all-in double columns, I do not think anyone will read. None but scientific men ever look in the Appendix of a Report. And this is for the vulgar public.”
– Florence Nightingale