It seems ever so long since I came up here, but I had been here only four days before these cases came in, and we hope in about another week to be able to send word that we are ready to receive patients from the front.
XXIX
Pinetown, Natal,
May 1900.
Now we are really at work at last, and though I can't say everything is working very smoothly, I think the patients are being well looked after, and I suppose we must expect to have to worry through difficulties for some time to come.
On April 26th the Princess Christian Hospital train brought us fourteen officers and sixteen men, all stretcher cases, and all very ill.
They had come from Field Hospitals, and if one did not know how impossible it is to nurse them or even feed them up there, one would say it was almost murder to have sent them a journey of many hours (over 200 miles) in a jolting train.
There were no wounded in this first batch, and I think only about four or five who were not suffering from typhoid in one stage or another, from a few days, up to three weeks or more.
It was day and night work for us for the first two or three days, as each man seemed to need individual nursing if he was to have a chance of pulling round; the orderlies (though very willing) had everything to learn of ward duties; they could not even undress these men when they had been lifted on to their beds, much less had they any idea of washing them; a delirious man was a new experience to them, and if he got out of bed and lay on the floor, the orderly would go and ask Sister what he had better do!