![]() ![]() I studied correspondence that details Nightingale's information-design process, hand-drawn draft diagrams never before seen by the public and a complete catalog of her information graphics. I recently conducted the first in-depth study of how Nightingale created and used data visualization, and I share my research in the forthcoming book Florence Nightingale, Mortality and Health Diagrams (Visionary Press). Nightingale's key persuasion tactic was to convey statistics in exciting ways. The team focused its campaign on promoting sanitary reform: fresh air, clean sewers and less crowding. 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. She worked 20-hour days, mostly behind the scenes, writing letters, wrangling data and publishing anonymously. With public attention drifting away from the concluded war, Nightingale knew that the opportunity for reform was fleeting. Her prime target throughout this effort was the head of the British Army, Queen Victoria. Nightingale, with her quantitative mind, had to persuade people with common understanding but uncommon standing. Their poor data literacy muted statistical arguments that could have oriented them toward the facts. Resolute, Nightingale set out to sway the minds of generals, medical officers and parliamentarians. At around this same time, she began working with data and charts. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE was photographed in London a few months after returning home from war. 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. And the poor quality of army data made it impossible to know exactly how soldiers died. They wrongly believed, for example, that communicable diseases were caused by unavoidable realities-the weather, bad diet and harsh work conditions. Many government leaders accepted the loss of common soldiers as inevitable. Nightingale arrived back in London determined to prevent similar suffering from happening again. The causes of the soldiers' torment were numerous: incompetent officers, meager supplies, inadequate shelters, overcrowded hospitals and cruel medical practices. She was serving in the Crimean War, where Britain fought alongside France against the Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire. Nightingale had earned the moniker “Lady with the Lamp” by making night rounds on patients, illuminated by a paper lantern. ![]() The “horrors of war,” Nightingale realized, were inflicted by more than enemy bullets. An entire fighting force had been effectively lost to disease and infection. As the nursing administrator of a sprawling British Army hospital network, she had witnessed thousands of sick soldiers endure agony in filthy wards. In the summer of 1856 Florence Nightingale sailed home from war furious. ![]()
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