This is a 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

It's pretty easy to lie with statistics,

but it's really easy to lie with statistics

when there is a pretty drawing attached.

What follows is a story of data visualization and coercion, and it centers on a person not particularly

well known for either one of these things, the founder of Modern Nursing, Florence Nightingale.

And the perfect person to tell this story is Tim Harford, the undercover economist, the author of the Data detective, and the host of the podcast,

Cautionary Tales, which has just started its new season.

I could not be more excited. I love this show. I'm so happy it's back and this episode that we have the

honor of premiering is tailor-made for the 99-PI crowd. So without further ado,

here's Tim Harford. The Grand Barracks at Scutari and Istanbul were said to be the largest in the world when they were completed in the

1820s. By the 1850s a grim war would turn them into the world's largest

hospital. To inexperienced eyes the Scutare buildings were magnificent. To ours, in their

first state, they were truly whiteed sepulchres, pest houses.

Those are the words of a British nurse named Florence Nightingale. She sailed out to Istanbul during the Crimean War,

a pointless conflict between Russia and an alliance including the British.

Nightingale arrived late in 1854, the small team of nurses.

Their task was to assist in the care of wounded British soldiers coming back from the

battle front to the hastily converted barracks hospital at Scutari.

What did they discover waiting for them?

Oh, you gentlemen of England can have little idea from reading the newspapers of the horror and misery of operating upon these dying and exhausted men.

That this is the kingdom of hell, no one can doubt.

...