The British Expedition to the Crimea

by Sir William Howard Russell

"But, consider, this requisition will take time to be filled up and signed, and meantime these poor fellows will go."

"I cannot help that."

"I'll be responsible for anything you do."

"Oh, no, that can't be done!"

"Will a requisition signed by the P. M. O. of this place be of any use!"

"No."

"Will it answer, if he takes on himself the responsibility?"

"Certainly not."

The surgeon went off in sorrow and disgust.

I appended another special fact for Dr. Smith, the head of the British Army Medical Department. A surgeon of a regiment stationed on the cliffs above Balaklava, who had forty sick out of two hundred, had been applying to the "authorities" in the town for three weeks for medicines, and could not get one of them. The list he sent in was returned with the observation, "We have none of these medicines in store." The surgeon came down with his last appeal:—"Do, I beg you, give me any medicine you have for diarrhœa."