The reticence of the hospital authorities prevented the true state of affairs from reaching the British public. Indeed, the whole Service, from commandant to orderly, conspired to say “All right,” when all was wrong. One of the sisters has described how this policy worked in the wards. An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night, to see that all was in order. He was of course expected by the orderlies, and the moment he raised the latch he received the word, “All right, your honour,” and passed on. This was hospital inspection!
In excuse for the officers who were thus easily put off, it may be said that the wards were filled with pestilence, and the air so polluted by cholera and fever patients that it seemed courting death to enter.
For that reason orderlies already on the sick list were set to act as nurses, and they often drank the brandy which it was their duty to administer to the patients, in order to keep up their spirits, or “drown their grief,” as they preferred to put it. Men in this condition became very callous. Those stricken with cholera had their sufferings terribly enhanced by the dread of being buried alive, and used to beseech the orderlies not to send them to the dead-house until quite sure that they had breathed their last. Utter collapse was the last stage of Asiatic cholera, and the orderlies took little pains to ascertain when the exact moment of dissolution came; consequently numbers of still living men were hurried to the dead-house. One does not wish to hold up to blame and execration the seeming inhumanity of the orderlies. They were set to do work for which they were untrained and often physically unfit, and were also demoralised by the shocking condition of the wards. It was the system rather than individuals which was to blame.
Into these insanitary, filthy, and pestilential wards came the Lady-in-Chief, and she did not say “All right.” It was useless for officialdom to “pooh-pooh”: she, fortunately, had Government authority. What her quick eye saw was communicated to the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Raglan, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert at the War Office, and brought in due course the needed instructions for reform.
Not the least quality of the Lady-in-Chief was her influence over men in authority. She was not dictatorial, she was not aggressive, but she possessed the judgment which inspired confidence and the knowledge which compelled respectful attention. Her letters to the War Minister at home, and to Lord Raglan, the General in the field, were models of clear and concise documents, devoid of grumbling, rancour, or fidgety complaints, but they contained some appalling facts. Unerringly she laid her finger on the loose joints of the commissariat and hospital administration. By the enlightening aid of her letters from Scutari the Home Government was enabled to pierce the haze which surrounded the official accounts from the Bosphorus, and gradually the hospital management was put on a footing which harmonised with the Lady-in-Chief’s recommendations.
Lord William Paulet, who succeeded Major Sillery as Military Commandant at Scutari shortly after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, soon learned to place entire confidence in her judgment. “You will find her most valuable, ... her counsels are admirable suggestions,” wrote the War Minister to the new Commandant and Lord William proved the truth of the statement. Lord Raglan in one of his dispatches to the Duke of Newcastle said, “Lord William [Paulet] like Brown [Sir George Brown] speaks loudly in praise of Miss Nightingale,” adding that he was confident that she had “done great good.” As the weeks passed by, Lord Raglan grew to consider the Lady-in-Chief a most efficient auxiliary “general.”
CHAPTER XIII
AT WORK IN THE BARRACK HOSPITAL
An Appalling Task—Stories of Florence Nightingale’s interest in the Soldiers—Lack of Necessaries for the Wounded—Establishes an Invalids’ Kitchen and a Laundry—Cares for the Soldiers’ Wives—Religious Fanatics—Letter from Queen Victoria—Christmas at Scutari.
Neglected, dying in despair,
They lay till woman came,