Florence Nightingale is best remembered for her work as a nurse during the Crimean War and her contribution towards the reform of the sanitary conditions in military field hospitals. However, what is less well known about this amazing woman is her love of mathematics, especially statistics, and how this love played an important part in her life’s work.
Named after the city of her birth, Nightingale was born at the Villa Colombia in Florence, Italy, on 12 May 1820. Her parents, William Edward Nightingale and his wife Frances Smith, were touring Europe for the first two years of their marriage.
When Nightingale was about five years old her father bought a house called Embley near Romsey in Hampshire. This now meant that the family spent the summer months in Derbyshire, while the rest of the year was spent at Embley. Between these moves there were trips to London, the Isle of Wight, and to relatives.
The early education of Florence was placed in the hands of governesses, later their Cambridge educated father took over the responsibility himself. Nightingale loved her lessons and had a natural ability for studying. Under her father’s influence Nightingale became acquainted with the classics, Euclid, Aristotle, the Bible, and political matters.
Religion played an important part in Nightingale’s life. Her unbiased view on religion, unusual at the time, was owed to the liberal outlook Nightingale found in her home. On 7 February 1837 Nightingale believed she heard her calling from God, whilst walking in the garden at Embley, although at this time though she did not know what this calling was.
Nightingale developed an interest in the social issues of the time, but in 1845 her family was firmly against the suggestion of Nightingale gaining any hospital experience. Until then the only nursing that she had done was looking after sick friends and relatives. During the mid-nineteenth century nursing was not considered a suitable profession for a well-educated woman. Nurses of the time were lacking in training and they also had the reputation of being coarse, ignorant women.
While Nightingale was on a tour of Europe and Egypt starting in 1849, she had the chance to study the different hospital systems. In early 1850 Nightingale began her training as a nurse.
March of 1854 brought the start of the Crimean War, with Britain, France and Turkey declaring war on Russia. Although the Russians were defeated at the battle of the Alma River, on 20 September 1854, The Times newspaper criticised the British medical facilities. In response to this Nightingale arrived in Scutari, a suburb of Istanbul with 38 nurses on 4 November 1854.
Although being female meant Nightingale had to fight against the military authorities at every step, she went about reforming the hospital system. With conditions which resulted in soldiers lying on bare floors surrounded by vermin and unhygienic operations taking place it is not surprising that, when Nightingale first arrived in Scutari, diseases such as cholera and typhus were rife in the hospitals. This meant that injured soldiers were 7 times more likely to die from disease in hospital, than on the battlefield. Whilst in Turkey, Nightingale collected data and organised a record keeping system, this information was then used as a tool to improve city and military hospitals. Nightingale’s knowledge of mathematics became evident when she used her collected data to calculate the mortality rate in the hospital. These calculations showed that an improvement of the sanitary methods employed would result in a decrease in the number of deaths.
These unsanitary conditions, however, were not only limited to military hospitals in the field. On her return to London in August 1856, four months after the signing of the peace treaty, Nightingale discovered that soldiers during peacetime, aged between 20 and 35 had twice the mortality rate of civilians. Using her statistics, she illustrated the need for sanitary reform in all military hospitals. While pressing her case, Nightingale gained the attention of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as well as that of the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. Her wishes for a formal investigation were granted in May 1857 and led to the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army. Nightingale hid herself from public attention, and became concerned for the army stationed in India. In 1858, for her contributions to army and hospital statistics Nightingale became the first woman to be elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.
In 1860, the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses based at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, opened with 10 students. It was financed by the Nightingale Fund, a fund of public contributions set up during Nightingale’s time in the Crimea and had raised a total of It was based around two principles. Firstly that the nurses should have practical training in hospitals specially organised for that purpose. The other was that the nurses should live in a home fit to form a moral life and discipline. Due to the foundation of this school Nightingale had achieved the transformation of nursing from its disreputable past into a responsible and respectable career for women. Nightingale responded to the British war office’s request for advice on army medical care in Canada and was also a consultant to the United States government on army health during the American Civil War.
For most of the remainder of her life Nightingale was bedridden due to an illness contracted in the Crimea, which prevented her from continuing her own work as a nurse. This illness did not stop her, however, campaigning to improve health standards; she published 200 books, reports and pamphlets. One of these publications was a book entitled Notes on Nursing (1860). This was the first textbook specifically for use in the teaching of nurses and was translated into many languages. Nightingale’s other published works included Notes on Hospitals (1859) and Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes (1861). Florence Nightingale deeply believed that her work had been her calling from God. In 1874 she became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association and in 1883 Queen Victoria awarded Nightingale the Royal Red Cross for her work. She also became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit from Edward VII in 1907.
Nightingale died on 13 August 1910 aged 90.
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