In fact, these orderlies too often, I fear, bore some resemblance to the old class of nurses that I described, and were in many cases rough, unfeeling, ignorant men. Sometimes it was for this reason that they drank the brandy which should have been given to their patients; but often, again, it was because they were ill themselves, or else because they were so overcome by the horrors around them that they drank just to bring forgetfulness for a time.
The strange paralysis of which I have spoken seemed to hang over everything connected with the unfortunate soldiers of the Crimea. Mr. Sidney Herbert assured Miss Nightingale that the hospitals were supplied with every necessary. He had reason to think so, for the things had been sent, had left England, had reached the shores of the Bosporus. "Medical stores had been sent out by the ton." But where were they? I have already told you; they were rotting on the wharves, locked up in the warehouses, buried in the holds of vessels; they were everywhere except in the hospitals. The doctors had nothing to work with, but they could not leave their work to find out why it was.
The other authorities said it was "all right!" They knew the things had come, but they were not sure just who were the proper persons to open the cargoes, take out and distribute the stores; it must not be done except by the proper persons. This is what is called red tape; it stands for authority without intelligence, and many books have been written about it. I remember, when I was a child, a cartoon in Punch showing the British soldier entangled in the coils of a frightful serpent, struggling for life; the serpent was labeled "Red Tape." (The monster is still alive in our day, but he is not nearly so powerful, and people are always on the lookout for him, and can generally drive him away.)
This was the state of things when Miss Nightingale and her band of nurses arrived at Scutari. Her first round of the hospitals was a terrible experience, which no later one ever effaced from her mind. The air of the wards was so polluted as to be perfectly stifling. "The sheets," she said, "were of canvas, and so coarse that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. It was indeed impossible to put men in such a state of emaciation into those sheets. There was no bedroom furniture of any kind, and only empty beer or wine bottles for candlesticks."[4]
The wards were full to overflowing, and the corridors crowded with sick and wounded, lying on the floor, with the rats running over them. She looked out of the windows; under them were lying dead animals in every state of decay, refuse and filth of every description. She sought the kitchens; there were no kitchens, and no cooks; at least nothing that would be recognized to-day as a hospital kitchen. In the barrack kitchen were thirteen huge coppers; in these the men cooked their own food, meat and vegetables together, the separate portions inclosed in nets, all plunged in together, and taken out when some one was ready to take them. Part of the food would be raw when it came out, another part boiled to rags. This was all the food there was, for sick and well, the wounded, the fever-stricken, the cholera patient. No doubt hundreds died from improper feeding alone.
She looked for the laundry; there was no laundry. There were washing contracts, but up to the time of her arrival "only seven shirts had been washed." The clothes and bed linen of wounded men and of those sick with infectious diseases were thrown in together. Moreover, the contractors stole most of the clothes that came into their hands, so that the sick did not like to part with their few poor garments, for fear of never seeing them again, and were practically without clean linen, except when a soldier's wife would now and then take compassion on them, and wash out a few articles.
These were the conditions that Florence Nightingale had to meet. A delicate and sensitive woman, reared amid beauty and luxury, these were the scenes among which she was to live for nearly two years. But one thing more must be noted. Do you think everyone was glad to see her and her nurses? Not by any means! The overwrought doctors were dismayed and angered at the prospect of a "parcel of women" coming—as they fancied—to interfere with their work, and make it harder than it was already. The red-tape officials were even less pleased. What? A woman in petticoats, a "Lady-in-Chief," coming to inquire into their deeds and their methods? Had they not said repeatedly that everything was all right? What was the meaning of this?
This was her coming; this is what she found; now we shall see what she did.