Florence  became  interested  in  social  reform  when
quite  a  rage  for  statistics  was  beginning  in  select
circles.  Dr.  Farr,  the  leading  statistician  in  England,
was  a  great  friend  of  hers  and  she  looked  upon  the
book  of  the  Belgian  statistician  and  astronomer.  Dr.
Adolphe  Quetelet  (a  book  entitled  Essai  de  Physique
Sociale — in  which  statistical  methods  were  applied  to
180


HOSPITALS,      NURSES      AND      STATISTICS

social  problems),  as  a  Bible.  He  had  sent  her  a  copy
inscribed  "with  the  Author's  homage,  respect  and
affection"  and  she  kept  it  carefully  annotated  and
wrote  in  it  that  its  principles,  if  applicable,  afforded
"an  endless  vista  of  improvement,"  upon  which  vista
she  loved  confidently  to  dwell.  Quetelet  was  also  a
meteorologist  and  had  deduced  a  law  of  the  flowering
of  plants.  The  lilac  was  one  of  his  examples,  and  he
had  discovered  that  the  lilac  flowered  when  the  sum
of  the  squares  of  the  mean  daily  temperatures,  start-
ing calculations  from  the  last  frost,  equalled  4,264°  C.
Such  accuracy  of  prediction  enchanted  Florence
and  she  used  to  beg  those  of  her  friends  who  had
gardens  to  take  note  of  and  verify  Qu6telet's  law.
The  lilac,  because  of  its  obedient  habits,  was  a  special
favourite  of  hers;  what  she  would  have  said  to  a
flower  of  less  amenable  disposition,  which  does  exactly
as  it  likes,  I  do  not  know.
When  she  was  in  the  Crimea,  one  of  the  defects  in
hospital  administration  that  struck  her  most  glaringly
was  the  lack  of  proper  statistical  material.  The  deaths,
for  instance,  were  not  carefully  recorded.  There  were
three  separate  death-rolls;  the  adjutant  kept  a  daily
burial-roll;  the  medical  officer  made  one  return,
the  orderly-room  made  another.  None  of  these  tallied.
