To preside in Extra Diet Kitchens,[4]
″ in Linen Stores.
To teach the Orderlies to nurse in the Wards.
The proportion of Roman Catholic “Sœurs,” in French Military Hospitals,
is as small as this would be; they undertake even less duty than this:
in Military Hospitals they do much less than in Civil Hospitals.
Women in Military Hospitals should all be contracted servants, whether
Nuns, Ladies, or professional Nurses.
There should be a retiring pension to each woman.
3. Miss Nightingale took service on the ground of being under the
Principal Medical Officer, and, consequently, of not interfering with
him.
There was no _imperium in imperio_ in her case.
This exists in the case of the French “Sœurs de Charité,” and existed
in individual instances among the “Sisters” under Miss Nightingale;
_i. e._, they gave articles of diet, &c., as from Sisters, not in
obedience to Medical orders. This was immediately put a stop to by
her. That the Medical Officer is sole master of diets, is an axiom of
medicine, and of common sense.
This involved our only _answering_ the Extra Diet Rolls in our
kitchens; not originating either in quantity or quality.
Afterwards, although frequent were the insinuations that we
transgressed the above maxim, no evidence of the fact was ever
obtained, except the following, which is given _verbatim_ and
_literatim_, as “put into Court” by a First Class Staff-Surgeon, in
charge of one of the divisions of the Barrack Hospital, Scutari. He
alleged “that the Nurses were in the habit of giving diets without
leave;” and when pressed for the facts, produced the annexed statement
in “W. J. Northcott’s” handwriting.
“2447. Pte. John M‘Cormick, L. T. Corps, age twenty, 11 Company,
admitted into 6 Ward, F. Corridor. Admitted with Febris C. C.,
April 30th, 1856. On or about the 10th of May I was confined in the
Garrison Cells, Scutari, for allowing food and drink to be brought to
this Patient, by one of Miss Nightingale’s Nurses; and at the time
it was brought I were on duty at the Victoria Barracks, Scutari,
three-quarters of a mile from the Hospital, and never saw the Nurse,
food, or drink that was administerd to the above-named Patient, and
I never saw the docter that ordered me to be confind. I was confind
by order of 1st Class Staff-Surgeon Prendergast. About two and a half
hours after I were aquanted with the case.
“(Signed)
173. W. J. NORTHCOTT,
“A.W.M., M S.C.”