Florence Nightingale returned from war furious. She was the nursing administrator of the British Army hospital network and she had seen many sick soldiers suffer in filthy wards. The fighting force had been lost to disease and infections. Nightingale realized that the "horrors of war" were more than bullets.
Nightingale earned the nickname "Lady with the Lamp" because she made night rounds on patients. The Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire led to the formation of the British and French armies. Poor officers, inadequate supplies, overcrowded hospitals and cruel medical practices were some of the causes of the soldiers' torment.
Nightingale returned to London to make sure that there wasn't a repeat of suffering. It wouldn't be easy. The loss of soldiers was accepted by many government leaders. The weather, bad diet and harsh work conditions were wrongly thought to be the cause of communicable diseases. It was not possible to know how soldiers died. You can ask the officer who lost fighters, the ferryman who shuttled the sick, the doctor who treated invalids or the adjutant who buried bodies.
Nightingale set out to change the minds of people. Their poor data literacy made it hard for them to focus on the facts. Nightingale had to convince people with common understanding that she was right. The head of the British Army was her main target.
Nightingale knew that the chance for reform was fleeting. She worked for 20 hours a day, writing letters, wrangling data and publishing. A group of experts, including statesmen, statisticians and scientists, united with her to break the inertia and incompetence of the policy makers. The team focused on promoting sanitary reform.
Nightingale used exciting ways to convey statistics. In the upcoming book Florence Nightingale, Mortality and Health Diagrams, I share my research on how Nightingale created and used data visualization. Nightingale's information-design process, hand-drawn draft diagrams and a complete catalog of her information graphics were all studied by me. Nightingale's techniques were used to show how data graphics would become essential to public understanding and debate.
Nightingale and her team designed graphics that drew attention and engaged readers in ways that other media could not. Over two batches of publications, their diagram designs evolved, giving them a chance to react to the efforts of other parties. The competitors hid their graphic analysis inside their books. Nightingale used diagrams and witty prose in her charts. She had charts that were easy to read. She focused her narrative lens on certain claims instead of building complex arguments. It was more than a visualization.
Poor Sanitation and Overcrowded caused unnecessary deaths. She used easy-to- understand comparisons. Nightingale framed army mortality in a way that contrasted it with civilians. She showed how peacetime soldiers were more likely to die in army barracks than civilians. It was impossible to deny the realities of the data because of her graphics.
The diagrams were covered in the press. The issue of overcrowded barracks was debated in both houses of parliament after the first edition of the book was published. Four subcommissions focused on sanitary construction, health codes, a military medical school and military statistics supported the resolution. The quality of British Army data increased under the leadership of a Nightingale ally. Mortality from preventable disease among soldiers declined to less than that in the comparable civilian population, as a result of the new data collection operation. Nightingale published a final diagram of the war.
It took another decade for her campaign's biggest impact to come to fruition. In the British Public Health Act of 1875, Nightingale's reforms were codified. There were requirements for clean running water and regulated building codes. In doubling the average human life span during the next century, the law and the precedent it set worldwide would be driving forces.
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