Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
conditions. The book would spark a total restructuring of the War Office's administrative
department, including the establishment of a Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in
1857.
Nightingale remained at Scutari for a year and a half. She left in the summer of 1856, once the
Crimean conflict was resolved, and returned to her childhood home at Lea Hurst. To her surprise
she was met with a hero's welcome, which the humble nurse did her best to avoid. The Queen
rewarded Nightingale's work by presenting her with an engraved brooch that came to be known
as the "Nightingale Jewel" and by granting her a prize of $250,000 from the British government.
Nightingale decided to use the money to further her cause. In 1860, she funded the establishment
of St. Thomas' Hospital, and within it, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses.
While at Scutari, Nightingale had contracted "Crimean fever" and would never fully recover. By
the time she was 38 years old, she was homebound and bedridden, and would be so for the
remainder of her life. Fiercely determined, and dedicated as ever to improving health care and
alleviating patients suffering, Nightingale continued her work from her bed.
Residing in Mayfair, she remained an authority and advocate of health care reform, interviewing
politicians and welcoming distinguished visitors from her bed. In 1859, she published Notes on
Hospitals, which focused on how to properly run civilian hospitals.
Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is
credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or
occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram, to
illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed.
Her attention turned to the health of the British army in India and she demonstrated that bad
drainage, contaminated water, overcrowding and poor ventilation were causing the high death
rate. She concluded that the health of the army and the people of India had to go hand in hand
and so campaigned to improve the sanitary conditions of the country as a whole.
In 1859, Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. She
later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South
Street, Mayfair, London. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives
and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire. She left a
large body of work, including several hundred notes which were previously unpublished.