Florence Nightingale Author(s): I. Bernard Cohen Source:Scientific American, Vol. 250, No. 3 (March 1984), pp. 128-137 Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Stable URL: JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toScientific American This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:44:15 UTC All use subject to
Florence Nightingale She saved the lives of thousands of soldiers in the Crimea and was one of the founders of modern medical care. She was also a pioneer in the uses of social statistics and in their graphical representation F lorence Nightingale is remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a re- former of hospitals. She herself saw her mission in larger terms: to serve humanity through the prevention of needless illness and death. For much of her long life (1820-1910) she pursued this mission with a fierce determination that gave everything she did a singular coherence. Her greatest contributions were undoubtedly her efforts to reform theBritishmilitaryhealth-caresys- tem and her establishment, through the founding of training programs and the definition of sound professional stan- dards, of nursing as a respected profes- sion. Much of what now seems basic in modern health care can be traced to pitched battles fought by Nightingale in the 19th century. Less well known, be- cause it has been neglected by her biog- raphers, is her equally pioneering use of the new advanced techniques of statisti- cal analysis in those battles. Nightingale learned at first hand as chief nurse during the Crimean War (1854-56) that improved sanitary condi- tions in military hospitals and barracks could sharply cut the death rate and save thousands of lives. Her battle was to convince skeptical men in power. At a time when the collection and analy- sis of social statistics was still uncom- mon Nightingale recognized that relia- ble data on the incidence of preventable deaths in the military made compelling arguments for reform. Thus in addition to advancing the cause of medical re- form itself she helped to pioneer the rev- olutionary notion that social phenome- na could be objectively measured and sllbjected to mathematical analysis.
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