[136] In 1865 Miss Nightingale, after an energetic correspondence with the War Office, secured payment, long before promised, to an English custode.
But I must not linger further over points of detail. Miss Nightingale's eye for detail did not prevent her from taking comprehensive views, and from time to time she sent to Mr. Herbert schemes of reorganization. In the following letter, of January 8, 1855, she exposed the extent and nature of the evil in the hospitals, and the kind of reform which was needed to remedy them:--
As the larger proportion of the army (in which we are told that there are not two thousand sound men) is coming into hospital--as there are therefore thousands of lives at stake--as, in a service where the future of the official servants is dependent upon the personal interest of one man, these cannot be expected to peril that future by getting themselves shelved as innovators.
I feel that this is no time for compliments or false shame; and that you will never hear the whole truth, troublesome as it is, except from one independent of promotion....
I subjoin a rough estimate of what has been given out by me during one month--_the whole at the "requisition" of the Medical Men_--all of which I have by me (merely in order to substantiate the facts of the destitution of these hospitals).
Since the 17th December, we have received 3400 sick, and I have made no sum total as yet of what has been done for these new-comers by us--excepting for one corridor, which I enclose.
(1) Thus the Purveying is _nil_--that is the whole truth, beyond bedding, bread, meat, cold water, fuel.
Beyond the boiling _en masse_ in the great coppers of the general kitchen the meat is not cooked, the water is not boiled except what is done in my subsidiary kitchens. My schedule will show what I have purveyed.
I have refused to go on purveying for the third Hospital, the Sultan's Serail[137]--the demands upon me there having been begun with twelve hundred articles, including shirts, the first night of our occupying it. I refer you to a List of what was _not_ in store, and to a copy of one requisition upon me sent last letter.
[137] This is the "Palace Hospital." See above, p. 174.
(2) The extraordinary circumstance of a whole army having been ordered to abandon its kits, as was done when we landed our men before Alma, has been overlooked entirely in all our system. The fact is, that I am now clothing the British Army. The sick were re-embarked at Balaclava for these Hospitals, without resuming their kits, also half-naked besides. And when discharged from here, they carry off, small blame to them, even my knives and forks--shirts, of course, and Hospital clothing also. The men who were sent to Abydos as convalescents were sent _in their Hospital dresses_, or they must have gone naked. The consequence is that not one single Hospital dress is now left in store, and I have substituted Turkish dressing-gowns from Stamboul (three bales in the passage are marked Hospital Gowns, but have not yet been "_sat upon_"). To purvey this Hospital is like pouring water into a sieve; and will be, till regimental stores have been sent out from England enough to clothe the naked and refill the kit.