THE ADMINISTRATOR
I have no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale has exhibited
greater power of organization, a greater familiarity with details,
while at the same time taking a comprehensive view of the general
bearing of the subject, than has marked the conduct of any one
connected with the hospitals during the present war.--_Sidney
Herbert_ (speech at Willis's Rooms, Nov. 29, 1855).
Ostensibly, and by the strict letter of her original instructions, Miss
Nightingale was only Superintendent of the Female Nursing establishment.
In fact, and by force of circumstances, she became a Purveyor to the
Hospitals, a Clothier to the British Army, and in many emergencies a
_Dea ex machina_.
* * * * *
She became, first, Purveyor-Auxiliary to the hospitals at Scutari. My
statements under this head might seem to be the inventions of a satirist
if I did not disclaim credit for such ingenuity by adding that they are
in every case extracted from official sources. Of the ignorance existing
in high places of the true state of things at Scutari, the best
illustration is the answer which the British Ambassador gave when he was
asked by the Commissioner of the _Times_ Fund what things were most
needed in the hospitals. "Nothing is needed," said Lord Stratford, and
the only suggestion he could make to the _Times_ was that it should
devote its fund to building an English Church at Pera. Miss Nightingale
thought that the service of God included the service of man, and Mr.
Macdonald, the _Times_ Commissioner, agreed with her. Between them, they
established not a church, but a store. The Ambassador of course formed
his conclusions from what he was told; and the Principal Medical Officer
at Scutari "stated that he wanted nothing in the shape of stores or
medical comforts at a time when his patients were destitute of the
commonest necessaries. Assistance which had been discouraged as
superfluous was eventually found essential for the lives of the
patients."[114]
"I am a kind of General Dealer," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mr.
Herbert (Jan. 4, 1855), "in socks, shirts, knives and forks, wooden
spoons, tin baths, tables and forms, cabbage and carrots, operating
tables, towels and soap, small tooth combs, precipitate for
destroying lice, scissors, bedpans and stump pillows. I will send
you a picture of my Caravanserai, into which beasts come in and
out. Indeed the vermin might, if they had but 'unity of purpose,'
carry off the four miles of beds on their backs, and march with
them into the War Office, Horse Guards, S.W."
[114] _Roebuck Committee_, Fifth Report, pp. 20, 21.
The caravanserai was the large kitchen aforesaid (p. 173). "From this
room," wrote one of the lady volunteers, "were distributed quantities of
arrowroot, sago, rice puddings, jelly, beef-tea, and lemonade upon
requisitions made by the surgeons. This caused great comings to and fro;
numbers of orderlies were waiting at the door with requisitions. One of
the nuns or a lady received them, and saw they were signed and
countersigned before serving. We used, among ourselves, to call this
kitchen the tower of Babel. In the middle of the day everything and
everybody seemed to be there: boxes, parcels, bundles of sheets, shirts,
and old linen and flannels, tubs of butter, sugar, bread, kettles,
saucepans, heaps of books, and of all kinds of rubbish, besides the
diets which were being dispensed; then the people, ladies, nuns, nurses,
orderlies, Turks, Greeks, French and Italian servants, officers and
others waiting to see Miss Nightingale; all passing to and fro, all
intent upon their own business, and all speaking their own
language."[115]
[115] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. p. 68.
There was also in "The Sisters' Tower," as this part of the Barrack
Hospital came to be called, a small sitting-room; and in it "were held
those councils over which Miss Nightingale so ably presided, at which
were discussed the measures necessary to meet the daily-varying
exigencies of the hospital. From hence were given the orders which
regulated the female staff. This, too, was the office from which were
sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at
home, telling of the sufferings of the sick and wounded."[116] In the
Report of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, as also in Miss
Nightingale's _Statement to Subscribers_, the full list of articles
supplied by her may be found, tabulated with a precision and amplitude
of detail characteristic of her. It included the miscellaneous utensils,
etc., enumerated above, and also various articles of food required for
the "extra diets" mentioned in the preceding chapter. The supplies were
furnished partly by the _Times_ Fund, partly out of moneys sent to her
by benevolent persons, and partly out of the private purse of herself
and her immediate friends. Much of the expenditure was ultimately
refunded to her by the Government. The sick and wounded soldiers at
Scutari would, I fear, have felt ill requited for the lack of linen,
sheets, utensils, and extra diet by hearing that a beautiful new church
was being built at Pera.
[116] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, by S. G. O., p. 24.
But, it may be asked, were the things which Miss Nightingale procured
and issued really wanted? May they not have been her fads? and was not
hers perhaps a work of supererogation, for could not the official
Purveyor have supplied them? Such statements were widely made at the
time, and one can readily understand the reason. By drawing upon her own
stores, Miss Nightingale not only furnished the soldiery with the things
they were needing, but "administered to the defaulting administrators a
telling, though silent, rebuke; and it would seem that under this
discipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they uttered
touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to
give them time (it was always time the males wanted), and that the
moment a want declared itself, she made haste to supply it
herself."[117] But such complaints were entirely unfounded; for it was
shown by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission that she never issued
anything from her stores, nor did she allow any one else to do so,
except upon the demand of the medical officers, and after inquiry of the
Purveyor if he could supply them. I find among Miss Nightingale's papers
a few of the original requisitions from medical officers. Here is one of
them:--
PALACE HOSPITAL, 18_th January_ 1855. MADAM--I have the honor to
forward a requisition for 50 shirts and 50 warm flannels. The
Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I have limited my
request to meet the urgent requirements of the most serious cases
in my charge. I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient
humble servant,
EDWARD MENZIES, Staff Surgeon in Charge.
[117] Kinglake, p. 430. He cites an example of the complaints in a
private letter from Sir John Burgoyne to Lord Raglan (March 27,
1855). The complaint of the "groove-going men" has been revived
in our own day by Lord Stanmore, who complains of Miss Nightingale
(_Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. p. 381) that she got things
(which the Purveyor had failed to get) instead of informing him
where they could be got. She acted on what is a golden rule in
cases of emergency. When she wanted a thing done without delay,
she did it herself.
The list, said the commissioners drily, "must not be regarded as
conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were invariably
wanting in the [Government] stores." Goods, they explained, "have been
refused, although they were, to our personal knowledge, lying in
abundance in the store of the Purveyor." Why refused? Because the
Purveyor took it upon himself to override the requisition of the medical
officers? Not at all. "This was done because they had not been examined
by the Board of Survey. On one occasion, in the month of December last
[1854], we found that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs,
and it is probable that this has not been the only instance of such an
occurrence." Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert show that it was
a frequent occurrence. For instance, in February 1855, she received a
requisition from the medical officers at Balaclava for shirts. She knew
that 27,000 shirts had at her instance been sent by Government from
home, and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would not let them
be used; "he could not unpack them without a Board." Three weeks elapsed
before the Board released the shirts. The sick and wounded, lying
shivering for want of rugs and shirts, would have expressed themselves
forcibly, I fear, if it had been explained that they must shiver still
until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.
Miss Nightingale's impatience at such delays was the origin, doubtless,
of a story which had wide currency at the time that on one occasion she
ordered a Government consignment to be opened forcibly, while the
officials wrung their hands at the thought of what the Board of Survey
might presently say. The story was mentioned in the Roebuck Committee;
and, though it was not confirmed, I think that Miss Nightingale was
quite capable of the dreadful deed. Certainly she often insisted on
obtaining first-hand evidence for herself, instead of trusting to the
report of others; for in one of her letters to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21,
1854), I find this passage: "This morning I foraged in the Purveyor's
Store--a cruise I make almost daily, as the only way of getting things.
No mops, no plates, no wooden trays (the engineer is having these made),
no slippers, no shoe-brushes, no blacking, no knives and forks, no
spoons, no scissors (for cutting the men's hair, which is literally
alive), no basins, no towelling, no chloride of zinc." Then she
enumerates the things which Mr. Herbert should send from London, adding,
"The other articles mentioned above as not now in store can be had at
Constantinople" or Marseilles; whence, I imagine, she proceeded to get
them. Shopping at Scutari was not an afternoon's easy amusement:--
"English people," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 10), "look upon
Scutari as a place with inns and hackney-coaches, and houses to let
furnished. It required yesterday, to land 25 casks of sugar, four
oxen and two men for six hours, plus two passes, two requisitions,
Mr. Bracebridge's two interferences, and one apology from a
quarter-master for seizing the _araba_, received with a smile and a
kind word, because he did his duty; for every _araba_ is required
on Military store or Commissariat duty. There are no pack-horses
and no asses, except those used by the peasantry to attend the
market 1-1/4 miles off. An _araba_ consists of loose poles and planks,
extended between two axle-trees, placed on four small wheels, and
drawn by a yoke of weak oxen.... Four days in the week we cannot
communicate with Constantinople, except by the other harbour,
1-1/4 miles off, to which the road is almost impassable."
But, somehow or other, Miss Nightingale was able to supply from her
stores in hand, or to obtain from Constantinople or Smyrna or elsewhere,
many things which the Purveyor-General could not, or would not, obtain.
She had the forethought, as already related, to lay in at Marseilles on
her way out a large supply of articles which she deemed likely to be
useful; and at Scutari Mr. Macdonald of the _Times_ was untiring and
resourceful. In the course of time, as funds continued to pour in, and
the Government purveying became more efficient, Miss Nightingale was
able on emergency to supply, not only the British, but their allies. In
the spring of 1856, when the scourge of typhus committed sad ravages
among the French, and the _amour propre_ of the _Intendance_ prevented
the acceptance of the humane offer of medical comforts as a loan from
the British Government, Miss Nightingale paved the way in overcoming
this scruple by sending, as a present to the French Sisters and Medical
Officers, large quantities of wine, arrowroot, and meat-essence. The
Sardinian Sisters of Mercy also experienced much kindness at her hands
when the destruction of a supply-ship by fire had left them without many
things needed by their patients. She sent supplies also to the Prussian
Civil Hospital, where many Britishers were treated; for this good office
she received a letter of thanks from the king of Prussia (Sept. 1856).
To her quarters at Scutari, the Turks, too, often resorted for medicine
and advice. In her, says an eye-witness, the sickly and needy of all
nations found an active friend.[118] "She embraced in her solicitude,"
said a French historian of the Crimean War, "the sick of three
armies."[119]
[118] _Pincoffs_, pp. 82-83; and see _Hall_, p. 378.
[119] _La Guerre de Crimée_, by M. L. Baudens, p. 104. Miss Nightingale
paid a tribute to the "wise and enlightened sanitary views" of
M. Baudens. See her _Subsidiary Notes_, p. 133 _n._
Miss Nightingale's initiative was further useful in extracting needed
articles which were contained in the Government store, but yet had not
been forthcoming, either because nobody else had asked for them, or
because somebody had not been lucky enough to hit upon the right moment
for asking. The system in force was most ingeniously contrived to bring
about such a state of things. Articles were only supplied to the
hospitals by the Purveyor on the requisition of a medical officer. The
medical officers were overburdened with work, and perhaps omitted to
send in a requisition. Or they sent in a requisition, and the form was
returned, marked "None in store." The articles may subsequently have
been obtained or have arrived from England, but no note was kept in the
Purveying Department of unfulfilled requisitions, and unless the medical
officers requisitioned again, the articles were not supplied. The
Commissioners found that from this cause patients were sometimes left
without beds, though there were bedsteads in store at the time. Happily
Miss Nightingale had laid in a good many at Marseilles.
II
There was another sphere in which Miss Nightingale came to the rescue of
the sick and wounded from the blunders of official administration. She
clothed them, 50,000 shirts in all having been issued from her store.
The history of this private clothing department is curious. The
regulations of the War Office assumed that every soldier brought with
him into hospital an adequate kit, and it was no part of the Purveyor's
duty to supply such a thing as a shirt. But three of the four generals
of division in the Crimea had decided not to disembark the men's
knapsacks. Sebastopol, it was confidently expected, would fall in a few
days' time, and the men were to march light. In most cases they never
saw their knapsacks again.[120] Hence the sick and wounded who arrived
at Scutari immediately after the Battle of the Alma were destitute of
all clothing except what was on their persons, and that was in many
cases fit only for the furnace. No regulation existed whereby, if the
soldier had for military reasons been deprived of his kit, the
deficiency could be made good. The supply of a change of linen for the
sick and wounded while in hospital, and of clean shirts to wear when
invalided home or returned to the front, was perhaps a better allocation
of benevolent funds than a supply of altar-cloths for a new church at
Pera. At any rate Miss Nightingale thought so; and thus she and her
coadjutors were in some measure the clothiers as well as the purveyors
of the wounded soldiers.
[120] For a reference to this matter by Miss Nightingale, see below,
p. 224.
III
Miss Nightingale assumed responsibility on one occasion as a builder,
and this was at the time the usurpation which was most condemned in some
quarters and the most commended in others. Some wards in the Barrack
Hospital were in so dilapidated a condition as to be unfit for the
reception of patients. The Commander-in-Chief had warned the hospital
authorities that additional sick and wounded might shortly be upon their
hands. The uninhabited wards might by prompt expenditure be made capable
of accommodating 800 cases. The expenditure, however, would be
considerable, and no one seemed willing to incur it without superior
authority. Miss Nightingale stepped into the breach. With the
concurrence of Dr. McGrigor, a senior medical officer of the hospital,
she represented the urgency of the case to Lady Stratford de Redcliffe.
The Ambassador had been empowered, as we have seen, to incur
expenditure; and his wife, as she had given Miss Nightingale to
understand, was the authorized intermediary between the Ambassador and
the authorities of the hospitals. Lady Stratford saw the urgent
necessity of the work, and Mr. Gordon, the chief of the engineering
staff, was instructed to put it immediately in hand. The workmen, 125 in
number, presently struck, whereupon Miss Nightingale, on her own
authority, succeeded in engaging 200 other workmen, and the work was
rapidly completed. Lord Stratford subsequently disclaimed any
responsibility,[121] and Miss Nightingale paid the bill out of her own
private resources. The War Department, when the affair came to their
knowledge, approved her action, and reimbursed her. This instance of
"the Nightingale power" made a great impression, and she herself
regarded it as the most beneficent thing she did in the East. The fame
of the affair was noised abroad, and reached the British camp at
Balaclava, where our unfailing friend, Colonel Sterling, heard of it
with hot indignation. Miss Nightingale, he wrote, "coolly draws a
cheque. Is this the way to manage the finances of a great nation? _Vox
populi_? A divine afflatus. Priestess, Miss N. Magnetic impetus drawing
cash out of my pocket!" In normal times it would certainly not be the
way to manage the finances of a great nation. And even in times of
emergency the way which would of course have occurred to any
well-regulated slave of routine was that Miss Nightingale should have
spoken to some officer on the spot, that he should have represented the
case to the Director-General of the Army Medical Department in London,
that the Director-General should have moved the Horse Guards, and the
Horse Guards the Ordnance, that the Ordnance should then have approached
the Treasury, and that after process of minuting and countersigning, the
work should in due course have been officially ordered. But meanwhile
Lord Raglan's wounded would have arrived at the hospital, and there
would have been no wards ready to receive them. As it was, "the wards
were ready," as Miss Nightingale reported to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21), "to
receive 500 men on the 19th from the ships _Ripon_ and _Golden Fleece_.
They were received in the wards by Dr. McGrigor and myself, and were
generally in the last stage of exhaustion. I supplied all the utensils,
including knives and forks, spoons, cans, towels, etc., clearing our
quarters of these."
[121] My statements are based on a letter from Miss Nightingale to
Mr. Sidney Herbert of Dec. 5, 1854.
IV
In all these things Miss Nightingale may be warmly commended, but the
officials need not be too hotly condemned. They were but doing their
duty, as they had learnt it; and for the rest, it was the system, or
want of system, that was at fault. Just as in London there was no
co-ordination among the Departments, so at Scutari there was no unity of
action, and no clear personal responsibility. "It is a current joke
here," wrote Miss Nightingale from Scutari, "to offer a prize for the
discovery of any one willing to take responsibility." It was never
awarded, for Miss Nightingale herself was, I suppose, "barred." In
writing to Mr. Herbert, she called many of the officials at Scutari by
very hard names, but in other letters she admitted that the ultimate
fault lay elsewhere. "The grand administrative evil," she said (Dec.
10), "emanates from home--in the existence of a number of departments
here, each with its centrifugal and independent action, uncounteracted
by any centripetal attraction, viz. a central authority capable of
supervising and compelling combined effort for each object at each
particular time." Mr. Herbert might write, but the officials would not
act. The force of custom was too strong. Miss Nightingale showed the
Purveyor a letter from the Minister. "This is the first time," he said,
"I have had it in writing that I was not to spare expense. I never knew
that I might not be thrown overboard." "Your name," she had told Mr.
Herbert (Nov. 25), "is continually used as a bug-bear. They make a deity
of cheapness, and the Secretary at War stands as synonymous here with
Jupiter Tonans, whose shafts end only in a _brutum fulmen_. The
cheese-paring system, which sounds unmusical in British ears, is here
identified with you by the officers who carry it out. It is in vain to
tell the Purveyors that they will get no _kudos_ by this at home."
It should not be supposed, however, that Miss Nightingale was a spurner
of rules, and a despiser of discipline, routine, and subordination. The
very reverse is the case. Her whole career makes it probable, the
character of her mind suggests it, and the administration of the funds
placed at her disposal, with which the present chapter has mainly been
concerned, proves it. If she shocked and staggered some official minds
by her daring innovations, it was her strictness and insistence upon
rules and regulations that was most criticized in unofficial quarters.
She explained the matter very clearly in her final _Statement to
Subscribers_. She had been placed by the Government in two positions of
trust, each independent of the other. She had been appointed
superintendent of the nursing establishment; and she further had
received authority, as almoner of the "Free Gifts" (as the Royal Bounty
was called), to apply them, and any other gifts derived from private
sources, in the War Hospitals. In the second of these capacities, she
could, if she had chosen, have administered her stores solely at her
personal discretion, and have delegated a like discretion to other
superintendents, sisters, or nurses appointed by her. But, except in a
few special cases, which it were superfluous to enumerate, she rejected
the liberty of personal discretion, and administered her funds only upon
the requisition of medical officers. (She lays repeated stress on this
fact, but I daresay that she herself was often the originating source of
the requisitions. We have seen that in Harley Street she had learnt the
art of managing overworked doctors.) Her statement of the reasons which
governed her action is characteristic of her good sense. The exercise of
personal discretion alone would have been the easier course; but the
objections to it were "the abrogation of ordinary rule; the
impossibility of preventing irregular issues, or at least of disproving
the charge, and the unfitness of a large proportion of the women, who
efficiently discharge the duty of the Nurses, to be the judges of the
wants of soldiers and distribution of supplies to them; and, farther,
the abuse which some would undoubtedly make of the power. To those to
whom the charge of dishonesty would not apply, religious partiality
either would, or, what in matters of this kind is only less mischievous,
would be believed to, apply." Next, there was the danger of patients
being given other food than what the medical officers ordered. "It is
needless to state to any sensible person, even without hospital
experience, the manifold dangers of issuing to Nurses, whether 'Ladies,
Sisters, or Nurses,' stores or facilities for procuring stores, to be
distributed at their own discretion through the Wards. It is to be
remembered that the employment of women in Army Hospitals is recent,
that many experienced and able Surgeons are opposed to it, that, among
these, some are honestly, and some are unscrupulously prone to find
objections to it, and to exaggerate mischiefs arising from it; that the
Surgeon can, to a considerable extent, allow the Nurse to be useful, or
force her to be comparatively useless, in his Wards; that the War
Hospitals are a bad field for investing the Nurse with powers and
offices which she never exercises in Civil Hospitals. On these grounds,
as strict an adherence to existing rules as was possible appeared to be
the only course.... Miss Nightingale exacted and she rendered adherence
to rules to a large extent, and she strictly reverted to them when any
emergency, during which, at the instance of authorities, she had
departed from them, had ceased. A position such as hers necessarily
exposes the holder to attacks from different quarters upon opposite
grounds. While previously existing authorities are disposed to complain
of all novel expenditure as lavish, and tending to the relaxation of
discipline by over-indulgence, others, who feel themselves checked or
restrained by regulations in the distribution of comforts according to
their ideas of benevolence, will naturally object to the obstruction, in
their view unnecessarily, interposed to the current of public
liberality. While the experience of all who have conducted the
operations of any extensive charity proves that the application of the
ordinary axioms of business is the only road to success, it also
sufficiently shows that such application is surely attended by no small
measure of unpopularity."[122]
[122] _Statement_, pp. 19, 26. How greatly Miss Nightingale's strict
rules were resented is shown by attacks upon her administration
printed by certain of Miss Stanley's nurses. The most bitter of
these is to be found in the text and appendix of _The Autobiography
of a Balaclava Nurse_, 1857 (No. 13, Bibliography B). See also
_Eastern Hospitals_, 3rd ed., pp. 44-5, 52-3.
She saw the value of rules, and respected them, sometimes even when they
were ridiculous. On a cold night in January 1856, she was by the bedside
of a dying patient; whose feet she found to be stone cold. She requested
an orderly to fetch a hot-water bottle immediately. He refused, on the
ground that his instructions were to do nothing for a patient without
directions from a medical officer. Miss Nightingale stood corrected, and
trudged off to find a doctor and make requisition for the bottle in due
form. On a night in the following month, there was an unusually cold
east wind, with a heavy snowfall. The patients in the ward attended by a
civilian doctor were exposed to the wind and complained bitterly of the
cold, but the regulation supply of fuel had given out. As the Government
store was closed, Miss Nightingale waived the rule about applying first
to the Purveyor, and gave the doctor fuel from her private stores. Next
day the civilian doctor requisitioned in due form for an extra supply of
fuel. He was refused. He carried his case to the Inspector-General. That
official pleaded that he could not depart from the regulations which
allowed only a certain quantity of wood for each stove. But, urged the
civilian, exceptional cold calls for an extra allowance. Possibly,
replied the Inspector-General with exemplary gravity, but "a Board must
first sit" upon the question. The civilian smiled good-humouredly, and
begged the great man to supply the wood first, and let the Board sit
upon it when the weather was milder. The Inspector-General consented.
These little incidents[123] throw a flood of light upon the difficulties
through which Miss Nightingale had to thread her way. She was a firm
believer in rules; but she was one of those able administrators who have
the sense to know, and the courage to act upon the knowledge, that rules
sometimes exist only to be broken.
[123] I take them from _Pincoffs_, pp. 58, 79.
And this was precisely the kind of initiative that the state of things
in the hospitals at Scutari demanded. Miss Nightingale's adherence to
rules may have brought unpopularity upon her from some of her
subordinates or subscribers; but her departure from rules, on due cause
of emergency, and her cutting of knots--perhaps even her breaking open
of consignments--brought from her official superior, Mr. Sidney Herbert,
nothing but commendation and support. One sees this sometimes in his
letters to herself, sometimes in those which he addressed to others, and
which reflect the impression made upon him by her vigour and resource.
"Pray recollect," he wrote to the senior medical officer (Dec. 1, 1854),
"in your demands upon us here, whether for more men, more comforts, or
more necessaries, that there is no question of pounds, shillings and
pence in such matters, but that whatever can be got _must_ be got." And
to the Purveyor-General he wrote: "This is not a moment for sticking at
forms, but for facilitating the rapid and easy transaction of business.
There is much mischief done to the public service by the stickling for
precedence and dignity between departments." Thus he wrote to many
others also; but he confessed to Mr. Bracebridge that he had "small
hopes of these men. I have been writing in this sense before, and in
vain; but I trust there is some improvement. They are so saturated with
the cheese-paring economy of forty years' peace, that there is no
getting them to act up to a great occasion."[124] Miss Nightingale's
initiative alone saved the situation.
[124] _Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. pp. 357, 360. It will be
noticed that he adopts some of Miss Nightingale's expressions.
I have in this chapter separated various illustrations of that
initiative from others which, in the preceding chapter, were attributed
to "the woman's insight." But perhaps the separation, though convenient,
is imaginary, and all the cases of Miss Nightingale's administrative
energy are ascribable to the same cause. Such was Mr. Kinglake's
opinion; yet I have always suspected that the exceeding prominence given
by him to the woman's touch in Miss Nightingale's work may in part have
been caused by a desire to heighten the contrasts, and to barb with
deadlier point his brilliant satire upon incompetence in official
places. Let those who believe that it is possible to make a sharp
delimitation between the "masculine" and the "feminine mind" settle this
matter as they may. It seems to me that as there are old women of both
sexes, so in both sexes there are men of business. My object in this
chapter has been to show that Miss Nightingale brought to bear upon the
task which confronted her at Scutari those high powers of the
administrative mind, be they masculine or feminine, which, in moments of
emergency, are capable of resource, initiative, decision.