Why Florence Nightingale was so much more than the ‘Lady with the Lamp’

Florence Nightingale is remembered primarily for her work improving conditions in military hospitals during the Crimean war. But, argues Bostridge, rather than viewing this wartime work as her crowning achievement, we should instead see it as a jumping off point for the pioneering and diverse career that followed.

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“Despite suffering from chronic brucellosis as the result of an infection she picked up during the Crimean war [and] being depressed and suffering terrible spinal pain, Nightingale worked harder than any of us can imagine in all sorts of areas,” says Bostridge. “[This work was] not only in the establishment of secular nursing, but also reforming the army medical services; she was responsible for the design of hospitals and published the seminal text Notes on Nursing.”

One of the things that's often overlooked about Nightingale is the fact that she was a highly significant progenitor of a national health service

Several of Nightingale’s other achievements are not so well known. Bostridge believes that one of her greatest was the attempt to introduce trained nurses into workhouses, in both Britain and Ireland. “With these reforms, Nightingale was making a very clear statement – a ringing declaration of the idea that even if you have no money, you should still have a basic right to good health care. One of the things that's often overlooked about Nightingale is the fact that she was a highly significant progenitor of a national health service.”

'Lady with the stats'

Nightingale also worked to improve the situation of peasants in India by working to tackle problems posed by a lack of irrigation. This work, according to Bostridge, relied on a remarkable ability “to process statistical information, analyse the data and then propose solutions”.

It was Nightingale’s impressive grasp of statistics that saw her appointed the first woman fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. She pioneered new methods of presenting data, such as the Rose Diagram – a graphic she created to expose the devastating influence of disease on the mortality rates of British soldiers during the Crimean War.

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“Nightingale wanted to be able to communicate important statistics to as large a number of people as possible,” says Bostridge. “She was always fascinated by statistics, and said she'd much rather read a book of statistics than a novel. That was her idea of relaxation. I think that ability with statistics is a clue to what made her so extraordinary.”

“A brilliant writer”

And it wasn’t only in scientific fields that Nightingale made an impact. “Another of her greatest achievements, which shows the extent to which she was a polymath, is her essay Cassandra,” says Bostridge. Written when she was an unfulfilled daughter living at home, the essay looks at the limitations placed on the lives of upper middle-class women who were unable to work and found their energies frustrated. “Cassandra was highly influential on later writers such as JS Mill and Virginia Woolf, who described it as being nothing less than a scream of anguish, impotence and frustration,” says Bostridge.

“As well as having one of the great administrative minds of the 19th century, Nightingale was a brilliant letter writer and essayist,” says Bostridge. “She was a polymath who ranged over classical languages, modern languages, statistics, medicine, hospital construction – a complex character who could turn her hand to so many things.”

As we mark her bicentenary, it’s important to remember – Nightingale was much more than just the Lady with the Lamp.

Read more about Florence Nightingale and other figures in our ultimate guide to the Crimean War

Mark Bostridge is a British writer and critic, known for his historical biographies