Note.

I have just seen a paper by Sir John Hall, entitled “Observations on the Difficulties experienced by the Medical Department of the Army during the late War in Turkey.” In this somewhat singular document, which appears to be a defence of Sir John Hall’s own conduct, there are certain statements made about the female nursing establishment in the East which require a word of comment.

It will be observed that throughout the paper, the weapon which Sir John Hall uses against all civil interference in repairing the sufferings which proceeded from the defects of his own department is simply detraction.

As for Civil Commissions, they were useless, as for Civil Hospitals, they were costly, and their officers lived magnificently and were extravagantly paid. As for the nurses, they were benevolent, pious, well-intentioned persons, but what could they do? How could one woman nurse eighty sick? The medical men thought they could not.

Why had Miss Nightingale stores of port wine placed at her disposal, which she could give to the French Hospitals, while he, the principal Medical Officer of the Army, had no such stores at his disposal?

Sir John Hall must have already discovered that this old weapon is no longer of use in defending his position.

It would have been more to the purpose had he produced his requisitions for food, clothing, comforts, &c., and shown how they were refused or not complied with. At the very time I gave over part of our own private stores of port wine, &c., to the French Hospitals (for part only of what was given were Government stores at all), Sir John Hall might have obtained, out of the large wine store at Balaklava, any amount of wine he required, by merely asking for it. The simple statement of this fact would have been a better answer to M. Baudens[20] than assuming that I could obtain from Government stores and wine for the French Hospitals which he could not obtain for his own.

As to his statement about the Nurses, it simply shows ignorance of the whole matter. Nobody ever contemplated giving to a Nurse the entire charge of a number of sick in a Military General Hospital. It is no part of good Hospital nursing to do so. With proper Orderlies, a Nurse can very well attend to sixty or seventy sick. We were prevented, indeed, by the authorities, and by circumstances, from organizing a proper system of nursing, and were obliged to do all the good possible in the best possible way. But Sir John Hall’s method of estimating the efficiency of nursing, by dividing the number of sick by the number of Nurses, is simply absurd.

Footnotes:

1. That I have always believed and I believe it more and more every day I live, that what is wrong in hospitals is to be patiently, laboriously, and, above all, quietly mended by efforts made from within them, if it pleases God to grant that blessing upon them without which all human efforts are vain, and not by accusations, investigations, and noise from without.

2. Also I have always believed, since I knew Hospitals at all, and I believe it more and more every day I live, that, with all their faults and shortcomings, which are easily learnt and more easily declaimed against, our great English hospitals are places in which more is done for the relief and cure of human misery, or, rather, of that large branch of it arising from disease, than in any other places in the world. Also that their faults are not essential to them, but that they may, by God’s blessing on the patient endeavours of many years, be very much modified.

But let the Queen pay for the transport of one box and one bag only, for each Nurse on duty; and if she takes more let her pay for it herself.

There should be no projections in a ward or recess, which are only lodgments for flue and dust. The walls of a ward should be even, polished, impervious.

After laying on the laque-lustre it is desirable that the floor should not be trodden upon for six weeks, and it is also well occasionally, say about once a week, to polish it, which conduces much to make it serviceable.

LONDON: PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.