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Florence Nightingale was a woman born in 12 May 1820. At a time where a woman’s role in society was limited due to societal perceptions and bias, she plays roles of outsized importance and significance for her gender.
Her formidable intellect may partially be due to her lineage and parental guidance. Nightingale was the child of a wealthy and well-connected British family. Her father had advanced ideas about women’s education (for his time) and personally educated her and her sister. Nightingale and her sister had access to knowledge through their father and studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature and philosophy.
While Florence Nightingale was famous for her work as a nurse during the Crimean War, she was actually a brilliant Statistician, Mathematician, creator of one of the earliest recorded infographic (a form of data visualisation), paired with assessments and recommendations (basically an intelligence report of wartime healthcare in her specific environment and time period). Her nickname “The Lady with the Lamp” was gained during this time.
iFrame View into… Archive. Mortality of the British army; illustrated by tables and diagrams. Publication date: 1858.
Reference Source: https://archive.org/embed/mortalityofbriti00lond
She applied her analytic abilities while functioning as a nurse during the war. Nightingale came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital she was working in were killed by poor living conditions.
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Nightingale began collecting data evidence and formulate hypothesis of probable reasons behind the high death rates. She also formed recommendations in the eventual hopes that she could present her findings before the Royal Commission, regarding the health of the army.
Her work on Designing for War-Care: “Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army of the East” became one of the earliest form of data visualisation (infographic).
iFrame View into… EdSpace. America. Visual War. The Art of Consequences. Florence Nightingale
Reference Source: https://edspace.american.edu/visualwar/nightingale/
“This particular piece of work helped convinced then Queen Victoria who will proceed to adapt Nightingale’s recommendations for War Medicine and Sanitation Practices, which would later become standard practice.”
Article was adapted and compiled from the following reference sources:
- Wikipedia. Florence Nightingale. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
- EdSpace. America. Visual War. The Art of Consequences. Florence Nightingale. Ref: https://edspace.american.edu/visualwar/nightingale/