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Appendixes This page intentionally left blank [3.19.56.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 22:10 GMT) Appendix A: Biographical Sketches L.A.J. Quetelet (1796-1874) The Belgian statistician and astronomer Quetelet1 was Nightingale ’s most important mentor on the application of scientific method to the social sciences. He was head of the statistical services for his own country and influential throughout Europe on the organization of government statistics, probability theory (he published original work on the subject) and his own statistical analyses in demography and criminology, which other social scientists replicated with data from their own countries. His politics were, like Nightingale’s, liberal and reformist. Most fundamentally, the two shared a commitment to knowledge for application, and both were subjected to criticism for supposedly denigrating ‘‘free will.’’ Nightingale and Quetelet met only once, when he was in London for the 1860 International Statistical Congress, over which he presided and to which she sent the two short papers on hospital statistics (see pp 83-89 above). Nightingale invited him to her home, indeed invited him to make use of it to hold meetings with other participants at the congress. He worked behind the scenes with Dr Farr to win acceptance for her proposals on uniform collection of hospital statistics. She knew his work well, annotated the copy of Physique sociale he gave her, and wrote ‘‘In Memoriam’’ on his death (see pp 11-69 above). She was deeply hurt by his death, which occurred only a month after her 1 On Quetelet’s life and work see: Lynn McDonald, The Early Origins of the Social Sciences 254-57; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, ‘‘Notes on the History of Quantification ’’; a chapter in Stephen P. Turner, Search for a Methodology of Social Science : Durkheim, Weber and the Problem of Cause, Probability and Action; Theodore M. Porter, Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900 31-67. / 827 father’s; hence she lost the major ‘‘father figure’’ of her intellectual life at the same time that her biological father died. Nightingale cited Quetelet in her published papers in Fraser’s Magazine and in numerous places in her unpublished essays, comparing him both with Plato and Newton. The idea of teaching his ideas to future administrators goes back to ‘‘In Memoriam,’’ as a memorial to Quetelet, ‘‘the science of which he was the discoverer, upon which alone social and political philosophy can be founded’’ (see p 40 above). Quetelet’s methodology, in short, was the means for realizing her call as a saviour in the world, by permitting the acquisition of knowledge that could be applied by God’s co-workers. She herself recognized its importance, to her Aunt Mai crediting him with ‘‘transmogrifying the whole of our theory’’ set out in Suggestions for Thought.2 To Dr Farr, on Quetelet’s death Nightingale reminisced about their late friend’s faith as being of ‘‘the very highest kind of religion, the seeking in the laws of the moral world which he had done so much to discover the action or plan of Supreme Wisdom and Goodness.’’ She noted how Quetelet had ‘‘objected to the dying being ‘munis des secours de la’ Roman Catholic ‘religion’ [armed with the help of the Roman Catholic religion].’’3 She left the three volumes of his work he had given to her in her will to her cousin, Rosalind Nash. (Sir) Edwin Chadwick (1800-90) Edwin Chadwick4 had been variously an employee, member and secretary of the royal commission on the reform of the Poor Law in the 1830s. He no longer held any official position when Nightingale first met him post-Crimea, although he was still well known, for good and ill, for his earlier work. He was Britain’s leading ‘‘sanitarian’’ and an expert on life insurance and public insurance programs. He was one of the very few people Nightingale respected enough to do his bidding , writing letters at his suggestion while her usual practice was to recruit others to write for her. Like Nightingale, Chadwick appreciated the need for media coverage of their causes. He even bought a small periodical to turn it into an outlet for sanitary causes. 2 Letter to Mary Shore Smith 30 August 1872, Add Mss 45793 f215. 3 Letter to Dr Farr 4 March 1874, Wellcome Ms 5474/124. 4 See S.E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. 828 / Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics [3.19.56.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 22:10 GMT...

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