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Where a particularly severe operation was to be performed, Miss Nightingale was present whenever it was possible, giving to both surgeon and patient the comfort and support of her wonderful calm strength and sympathy. In this dreadful inrush of the Inkerman wounded, the surgeons had first of all to separate the more hopeful cases from those that seemed desperate. The working force was so insufficient, they must devote their energies to saving those who could be saved; this is how it seemed to them. Once Miss Nightingale saw five men lying together in a corner, left just as they had come from the vessel.
"Can nothing be done for them?" she asked the surgeon in charge. He shook his head.
"Then will you give them to me?"
"Take
them," replied the surgeon, "if you like; but we think their case is hopeless."
Do you remember the little girl sitting by the wounded dog? All night long Florence Nightingale sat beside those five men, one of the faithful nurses with her, feeding them with a spoon at short intervals till consciousness returned, and a little strength began to creep back into their poor torn bodies; then washing their wounds, making them tidy and decent, and all the time cheering them with kind and hopeful words. When morning came the surgeons, amazed, pronounced the men in good condition to be operated upon, and we will hope, though the story does not tell the end saved.
Is it any wonder that one poor lad burst into tears as he cried: "I can't help it, I can't indeed, when I see them. Only think of Englishwomen coming out here to nurse us! It seems so homelike and comfortable."
In those days one of the nurses wrote home to England:
"It does appear absolutely impossible to meet the wants of those who are dying of dysentery and exhaustion; out of four wards committed to my care, eleven men have died in the night, simply from exhaustion, which, humanly speaking, might have been stopped, could I have laid my hand at once on such nourishment as I knew they ought to have had.
"It is necessary to be as near the scene of war as we are, to know the horrors which we have seen and heard of. I know not which sight is most heartrending to witness fine strong men and youths worn down by exhaustion and sinking under it, or others coming in fearfully wounded.
"The whole of yesterday was spent, first in sewing the men's mattresses together, and then in washing them, and assisting the surgeons, when we could, in dressing their ghastly wounds, and seeing the poor fellows made as easy as their circumstances would admit of, after their five days' confinement on board ship, during which space their wounds were not dressed We have not seen a drop of milk, and the bread is extremely sour. The butter is most filthy it is Irish butter in a state of decomposition; and the meat is more like moist leather than food. Potatoes we are waiting for until they arrive from France."
This was written six days after arrival. By the tenth day, a miracle had been accomplished. Miss Nightingale had established and fitted up a kitchen, from which eight hundred men were fed daily with delicacies and food suitable to their condition. Beef-tea, chicken broth, jelly a quiet wave of the wand, and these things sprang up, as it were, out of the earth.
Hear how one of the men describes it himself. On arriving at the hospital early in the morning, he was given a bowl of gruel. "'Tommy, me boy,' he said to himself, 'that's all you'll get into your inside this blessed day, and think yourself lucky you've got that.' But two hours later, if another of them blessed angels didn't come entreating of me to have just a little chicken broth! Well, I took that, thinking maybe it was early dinner, and before I had well done wondering what would happen next, round the nurse came again with a bit o' jelly, and all day long at intervals they kept on bringing me what they called 'a little nourishment.' In the evening, Miss Nightingale she came and had a look at me, and says she, 'I hope you're feeling better.' I could have said, 'Ma'am, I feels as fit as a fightin' cock,' but I managed to git out somethin' a bit more polite."
How was the miracle accomplished? Up to this time, the method of giving out stores had been much like the method (only there was really no method about it!) of cooking and washing. There were no regular hours; if you asked for a thing in the morning, you might get it in the evening, when the barrack fires were out. And you could get nothing at all until it had been inspected by this official, approved by that, and finally given out by the other. These were called "service rules"; they were really folds and coils of the monster Red Tape, at his work of binding and strangling. How was the miracle accomplished? Simply enough. Miss Nightingale, with the foresight of a born leader, had anticipated all this, and was ready for it. The materials for all the arrowroot, beef-tea, chicken broth, wine jelly, of those first weeks, came out of her own stores, brought out with her in the vessel, the Victis , from England. She had no intention of waiting a day or an hour for anyone; she had not a day or an hour to waste.