Women in Mathematics by Janet L. Beery Sarah J. Greenwald Jacqueline A. Jensen-Vallin & Maura B. Mast

Author:Janet L. Beery, Sarah J. Greenwald, Jacqueline A. Jensen-Vallin & Maura B. Mast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

11.3 The Use of Visual Representations

Diagrams are of great utility for understanding certain questions of vital statistics [29].

Nightingale was in the Crimea for just under two years, from Autumn 1854 to Summer 1856. In this short time she managed to reorganise the military hospitals and oversee the arrival and work of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary Condition of the Army in March 1855 (headed by Dr. John Sutherland who was to become one of her closest advisors). She was subsequently asked to contribute to the Royal Commission’s final report. Whilst in the Crimea she communicated with many influential people in the British government and society in order to highlight the plight of the soldiers and to raise awareness of the poor organisation of military statistics [1].

Shortly before Nightingale left the Crimea she became ill. This illness never left her and she remained an invalid until her death in 1910. Some of her biographers have referred to her as a malingerer as there was no documented diagnosis of her condition, but others say that her reported symptoms suggest that she is likely to have suffered from brucellosis [6] or spondylitis [1]. However, despite her illness, and days when she described herself as “entirely a prisoner to my bed” [27], throughout the remainder of her long life she produced numerous papers and reports and successfully lobbied government on a wide variety of issues – from the health of the British Army in England and India to the condition of the poor and mentally ill living in workhouses [1].

In Autumn 1856, just after her return from the Crimea, as a result of an audience with Queen Victoria and a subsequent meeting with the new Secretary of State for War, Lord Panmure, Nightingale was asked to draw up a list of potential members for a new Royal Commission to investigate the state of the British Army’s whole medical department both at home and abroad [1]. Panmure also requested her to write a confidential report to enable him to “further her views” on the sanitary requirements of the army [36]. The result was a lengthy report, Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army [30], accompanied by a pamphlet mainly containing diagrams and tables of data [29] which had been reproduced from the appendix to the Report of the Royal Commission. Initially confidential, it was later distributed to a variety of public figures [19] but not formally published [12]. The first draft of the report was 567 pages but a later preface by Nightingale indicates that she received a large amount of new material which she inserted into the beginning of several chapters. The original pages of the report have Arabic numbers but the additional pages have Roman numerals which are duplicated in each section. The resulting 853 pages, as McDonald noted, are “extremely difficult to follow”, but nonetheless make for fascinating reading [19].

Nightingale’s pamphlet of diagrams, referred to by Herbert as her “Coxcomb” [35], was publicised more widely.

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