Florence Nightingale - Talents and Fame Beyond Nursing

)The fact that Florence Nightingale - the Lady with the Lamp - is still famous as the founder of modern nursing is beyond doubt. What is little known is the fact that as a mathematician, she had pioneered inventions such as the pie-chart and the many analyst’s tools currently used by researchers in days before Excel and the Calculators, let alone the Computers.

To illustrate this point, consider her use of the ‘polar area diagram’, published in “Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army” in 1858.

http://library.tedankara.k12.tr/IB/2012/mathesh/EX(6)/example06_annotations_e.pdf

Polar-Area Diagram as invented by Florence Nightingale

Example of a polar-area diagram invented by Florence Nightingale. The original was in colour with the outer area in blue, the central darker areas in black, and the central lighter areas in red. The text in the lower left corner reads:

The Areas of the blue, red, & black wedges are each measured from the centre as the common vertex.

The blue wedges measured from the centre of the circle represent an area for the area the deaths from Preventable or Mitigable Zymotic diseases, the red wedges measured from the centre the deaths from wounds, & the black wedges measured from the centre the deaths from all other causes.

The black line across the red triangle in Nov. 1854 marks the boundary of the deaths from all other causes during the month.

In October 1854, & April 1855, the black area coincides with the red, in January & February 1855, the blue coincides with the black.

The entire areas may be compared by following the blue, the red, & the black lines enclosing them.

Source: Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, 1858.

Florence Nightingale also wrote many articles during her lifetime. Much of her writings was concerned with the spreading of medical knowledge, often written in simple English such that they could easily be read and understood by those with poor literacy skills. She also wrote on religion and on mysticism. A list of some notable writings includes: (source: http://www.countryjoe.com/nightingale/writings.htm)

The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine for the Practical Training of Deaconesses under the direction of Rev. Pastor Fliedner, embracing the support and care of a Hospital, Infant and Industrial Schools, and a Female Penitentiary. Printed by the Inmates of the London Ragged Colonial Training School, 1851.

Letters from Egypt. Privately printed, 1854.

Statements Exhibiting the Voluntary Contributions Received by Miss Nightingale for the Use of the British Hospitals in the East, With the Mode of their Distribution, in 1854, 1855, 1856. Harrison and Sons, 1857

Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army. Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War. Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War. Privately printed for Miss Nightingale, Harrison and Sons, 1858.

Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War, Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War. Privately printed for Miss Nightingale, Harrison, and Sons, 1858.

A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army During the Late War with Russia. Harrison and Sons, 1859.

Notes on Hospitals. John W. Parker and Sons, 1859. 3rd edition, almost completely rewritten, 1863. Longmans, Green, and Co.

Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artizans of England. Privately printed for Miss Nightingale. 3 vols. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1860.

Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is not. By Florence Nightingale. Harrison and Sons, 1860.

Army Sanitary Administration and its Reform under the Late Lord Herbert. McCorquodale and Co., 1862.

Observations on the Evidence Contained in the Stational Reports Submitted to the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India. By Florence Nightingale. (Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission.) Edward Stanford, 1863 (The “Observations.”)

Introductory Notes on Lying-in Institutions. Together with a Proposal for Organizing an Institution for Training Midwives and Midwifery Nurses. By Florence Nightingale. Longmans, Green and Co., 1871.

Life or Death in India. A paper read at the meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Norwich, 1873. With an Appendix on life or death by irrigation, 1874.

The Zemindar, the Sun, and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life or Death in India. Unpublished, proof copies among the Nightingale Papers, 1873-76.

On Trained Nurses for the Sick Poor. by Florence Nightingale. The Metropolitan and National Nursing Association, 1876.

Miss Florence Nightingale’s Addresses to Probationer-Nurses in the “Nightingale Fund” School at St. Thomas’s Hospital and Nurses who were formerly trained there, 1872-1900. Printed for private circulation.

Florence Nightingale’s Indian Letters. A glimpse into the agitation for tenancy reform. Bengal, 1878-82. Edited by Priya Ranjan Sen. Calcutta, 1937.

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, and well-connected British family. She believed that she had a God’s calling in February 1837 (she was 17 years of age at the time) to devote her life to the service of others. She chose to be a nurse in spite of fierce objection from her parents and family members. She had, however, a good friend in Sidney Herbert who was a politician and had been the Secretary at War. Herbert and his wife were instrumental in facilitating Florence’s nursing work and helped her to be the Main Nurse in a British led Army of Nurses during the Crimean War from October 1853 to February 1856.

Florence observed that ten times more soldiers died from illness such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery than from battle wounds. She collected statistics and analyzed these to form the basis of her reports to the Secretary of War, who sent the Sanitary Commission to Scutari in March 1855 to flush out the sewers and improve the ventilation of the barracks. The death rates in the barracks were drastically reduced since then.

In 1858, at the age of 38, Florence NIghtingale contracted a bacterial infection that made her homebound and routinely bedridden until her death at the ripe age of 90.

In spite of her bedridden health, she was determined to help society to improve health care and to alleviate patients’ suffering. She established a structured system of nurse training and remained an authority and advocate of health care reforms, talking to politicians and distinguished visitors from her bed.

Her most famous book “Notes on Hospitals” which focused on how civilian hospitals were to be properly run was published in 1859.