Historians now believe that both drainage and devolved enforcement played a crucial role in increasing average national life expectancy by 20 years between 1871 and the mid-1930s during which time medical science made no impact on the most fatal epidemic diseases. Her Crimean War statistics had convinced her that non-medical approaches were more effective given the state of knowledge at the time. The strengthened legislation was enacted in the Public Health Acts of 18.Īt the same time she combined with the retired sanitary reformer Edwin Chadwick to persuade Stansfeld to devolve powers to enforce the law to Local Authorities, eliminating central control by medical technocrats. She lobbied the minister responsible, James Stansfeld, to strengthen the proposed Public Health Bill to require owners of existing properties to pay for connection to mains drainage. The Royal Sanitary Commission of 1868-9 presented Nightingale with an opportunity to press for compulsory sanitation in private houses. "After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 1873, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18 per 1,000". Two years later, she provided a report to the commission, which completed its own study in 1863. In 18, she successfully lobbied for the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Indian situation. Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. "Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale. She later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
In 1859, Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term would frequently be used for the individual diagrams. Indeed, Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram, to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. While taken for granted now, it was at the time a relatively novel method of presenting data. She used methods such as the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801.
Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics. Florence Nightingale exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Much of her writing, including her extensive work on religion and mysticism, has only been published posthumously. She also helped popularize the graphical presentation of statistical data. Some of her tracts were written in simple English so that they could easily be understood by those with poor literary skills. In her lifetime much of her published work was concerned with spreading medical knowledge. Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer. Her social reforms include improving healthcare for all sections of British society, improving healthcare and advocating better hunger relief in India, helping to abolish laws regulating prostitution that were over-harsh to women, and expanding the acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honor, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. It was the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London.
In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
She was known as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. First female member of the Royal Statistical Society.įlorence Nightingale was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Main achievements: Pioneering modern nursing.