Victorian statistical graphics and the iconography of Florence Nightingale's polar area graph

Abstract

The popular iconic image of Florence Nightingale as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’, who administered acute nursing care to the casualties during the Crimean War, belies a more integrated approach to Nightingale's nursing, which was shaped by her use of evidence-based medicine, promulgated in her statistical reports, books and papers. This image thus undermines Nightingale's prodigious statistical work and her innovative statistical graphs that led to major health reforms in military and civilian hospitals, usually with the full support of the government. It was this empirically based strategy that enabled her to establish the necessary and essential nursing and hospital reforms, which modernized nursing in the mid- to late-Victorian period. This paper will examine the mathematical and statistical graphs that arose in the nineteenth century, which influenced Nightingale's use of statistical graphs. The iconography of her polar area graph, which was based on the mortality rates of British soldiers during the Crimean War, will also be assessed. It will be shown that Nightingale's role in promoting this graph helped to establish its iconic status, as did her introduction of new elements into the ordinary polar area graph.

Notes

¹ In the late eighteenth century, the original Lunar men gathered together for lively dinner conversations, whilst the journey back from their Birmingham meeting place was lit by the full moon. These dinners were led by the physician Erasmus Darwin, the entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, the engineer James Watt whose inventions harnessed the power of steam, Joseph Priestley, and the potter and social reformer Josiah Wedgwood. Their debates brought together philosophy, arts, science and commerce, and as well as debating and discovering, the ‘Lunarticks’ also built canals and factories, managed world-class businesses, and changed the face of Birmingham; see Uglow 2002.

² Florence Nightingale, Letter to Grandmama [Shore], 2 July 1828, MS.8991/9. Nightingale letters (Claydon Collection), 1827–39, Wellcome Library, London.

³ Florence Nightingale, Letter to ‘Pop’ [Parthenope], 24 February 1830. MS.8991, Nightingale letters (Claydon Collection), 1827–39, Wellcome Library, London.

⁴ Selina Braceridge, Letter to Parthenope, 23 November 1853, MS.9045/15. Nightingale letters (Claydon Collection), Wellcome Library, London.

⁵ See also material from the Florence Nightingale Museum at www.florence-nightingale.co.uk and Lee Higgins,‘The Life and Times of Miss Florence Nightingale’ in www.thelamp.co.uk.