Miss Nightingale's reluctance to assume the superintendence of additional nurses will be the more readily understood when we pass to the multifarious duties which circumstances led her to discharge.
"Having understood," she wrote to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (Nov. 7), "that Your Excellency has the power of drawing upon Government for the uses of the sick and wounded, I beg to state that there is at present a great deficiency of linen among the men in the Hospitals until the Government Stores can arrive and be appropriated to them. A hundred pairs of sheets and 200 shirts might be applied to such a temporary purpose, and would never be _de trop_. Also a few American stoves, upon which we might prepare delicate food for the worst cases, who require to be fed every two or three hours, which is of course impossible for the Medical Officers and Orderlies to attend to; many deaths are necessarily the consequence."
This suggestion to the Ambassador, made on the third day after Miss Nightingale's arrival, serves to introduce two main directions in which she applied a woman's insight to the condition of things at Scutari. Efficient nursing requires, she well knew, cleanliness and delicately cooked food. She set herself with characteristic energy to supply these necessities. She found "not a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit of soap, nor a broom," and instantly requisitioned 300 scrubbing brushes. "The first improvements took place," said Mr. Macdonald, "after Miss Nightingale's arrival--greater cleanliness and greater order. I recollect one of the first things she asked me to supply was 200 hard scrubbers and sacking for washing the floors, for which no means existed at that time."[109] Miss Nightingale had foreseen that washing would be one of the first things necessary. During the voyage out, as the ship was approaching Constantinople, one of the party went up to her and said earnestly, "Oh, Miss Nightingale, when we land, don't let there be any red-tape delays, let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows!" "The strongest will be wanted at the wash-tub," was the reply. Until Miss Nightingale arrived, the number of shirts washed during a month was six.[110] Up to the date of her arrival, the Purveyor-General had contracted for the washing of the hospital bedding, and of the linen of the patients. Simultaneously, however, with the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman, it was found that the contractor had broken down in the latter part of his contract. And even with regard to the former part, the bedding was washed, Miss Nightingale discovered, in cold water. She insisted upon hot; the more since it was found, as the Duke of Newcastle's commissioners reported, that many of the articles sent back from the wash as clean, had to be destroyed as being in fact verminous. Miss Nightingale accordingly took a Turkish house, had boilers supplied in it by the Engineer's Office, employed soldiers' wives to do the washing, and thus gave the sick and wounded the comfort of clean linen. All this was paid for partly out of her private funds and partly by the _Times_ fund.