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.