Whether, in any new plan, the House Stewards have the command of the Orderlies, or the Medical Man, which I am incompetent to determine, whichever it be let us have a Governor of the Hospital. As it is a Military Hospital, a Military Head is probably necessary as Governor.
On September 20, 1855, a Royal Warrant was issued, reorganizing the Medical Staff Corps, “for the better care of the sick and wounded,” revising the duties of the several officers, and improving their pay. Any one who cares to refer to this Warrant, and to compare it with Miss Nightingale's letters just given, will see that in large measure her suggestions were adopted by the War Department.
Miss Nightingale was careful, as we have seen, not to interfere with the doctors, and, though she thought that as administrators some of them were ineffective, she bore willing testimony to their skill and devotion (with some few exceptions) in their proper work. But she could not abstain from deploring one great omission, and she offered to subscribe largely towards repairing it:—
“One thing which we much require,” she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Feb. 22, 1855), “might easily be done. This is the formation of a Medical School at Scutari. We have lost the finest opportunity for advancing the cause of Medicine and erecting it into a Science which will probably ever be afforded. There is here no operating room, no dissecting room; post-mortem examinations are seldom made, and then in the dead-house (the ablest Staff Surgeon here told me that he considered that he had killed hundreds of men owing to the absence of these) no statistics are kept as to between what ages most deaths occur, as to modes of treatment, appearances of the body after death, etc., etc., etc., and all the innumerable and most important points which contribute to making Therapeutics a means of saving life, and not, as it is here, a formal duty. Our registration generally is so lamentably defective that often the only record kept is—a man died on such a day. There is a kiosk on the Esplanade before the Barrack Hospital, rejected by the Quarter-Master for his stores, which I have asked for and obtained as a School of Medicine. It is not used now for any purpose—£300 or £400 (which I would willingly give) would put it in a state of repair. It is not overlooked and is in every way calculated for the purpose I have named. The Medical teaching duties could not be carried[230] on efficiently with a less staff than two lecturers on Physiology and Pathology, and one lecturer on Anatomy, who will be employed in preparing the subject for demonstration, and performing operations for the information of the Juniors.”
This suggestion also was in part adopted. An excellent dissecting-room was built, provided with numerous instruments, microscopes and other apparatus.[138]
V
And so this woman of ideas went on, week by week, month by month, pouring in requisitions, hints, plans, to the Government at home; sometimes getting things done as she wanted, at others making suggestions which, had they been adopted, would still more have conduced to efficiency. Something of that calm and clear sagacity, which impressed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert when they made her personal acquaintance,[139] was reflected in her appearance and demeanour as observed by eye-witnesses at Scutari. “In appearance,” wrote Mr. Osborne, “Miss Nightingale is just what you would expect in any other well-bred woman, who may have seen perhaps rather more than thirty years of life; her manner and countenance are prepossessing, and this without the possession of positive beauty; it is a face not easily forgotten, pleasing in its smile, with an eye betokening great self-possession, and giving, when she wishes, a quiet look of firm determination to every feature. Her general demeanour is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much mistaken if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous. In conversation, she speaks on matters of business with a grave earnestness one would not expect from her appearance. She has evidently a mind disciplined to restrain under the principles of the action of the moment every feeling which would interfere with it. She has trained herself to command, and learned the value of conciliation towards others and constraint over herself. I can conceive her to be a strict disciplinarian; she throws herself into a work as its head. As such she knows well how much success must depend upon literal obedience to her every order.”[140]
It was soon perceived at Scutari that Miss Nightingale was a power. She mentioned incidentally at a later period a curious fact, which shows the way in which officers appealed to her as a kind of emergency-man. In 1862 she was pressing the War Office to separate the function of Banker from that of Purveyor, and she illustrated the confusion caused by the amalgamation from her own experience. Among the instances was this: “I had at Scutari thousands of sovereigns at a time in my bedroom, entrusted to me by officers who preferred making me their banker because of the perpetual discord. ‘Offend the Commissary or Purveyor, and you won't be able to get your money.’”[141] It was soon perceived also that Miss Nightingale was the person who, if any one, could get things done, and any official who had an idea took it to her. In the letters to Sidney Herbert she sometimes bids him know that what she says does not merely come from “poor me,” but represents the views “of all the best men here.” But she, I think, was the best man of them all.[142] Such was the opinion, at any rate, of a man among men, the redoubtable Sydney Godolphin Osborne. “Every day,” he wrote in describing his experience at Scutari, “brought some new complication of misery to be somehow unravelled. Every day had its peculiar trial to one who had taken such a load of responsibility, in an untried field, and with a staff of her own sex, all new to it. Hers was a post requiring the courage of a Cardigan, the tact and diplomacy of a Palmerston, the endurance of a Howard, the cheerful philanthropy of a Mrs. Fry. Miss Nightingale fills that post; and, in my opinion, is the one individual who in this whole unhappy war has shown more than any other what real energy guided by good sense can do to meet the calls of sudden emergency.”[143] And hence it was, too, that any official who felt the urgency of some particular need in his own department carried his case to the Lady-in-Chief. Did a surgeon want some point represented with special urgency to the authorities at home? He went to Miss Nightingale. Did a purveyor want some special authority from the military to facilitate his task? He went to Miss Nightingale. The centre of initiative at Scutari was in the Sisters' Tower; and going to Miss Nightingale had something of the magic that in earlier days was found in “going to Mr. Pitt.”[144]