A letter from Miss Nightingale herself to her friend of Harley Street, Dr. Bowman, the ophthalmic surgeon, gives a lively account of some of her difficulties, and a vivid picture of the horrors amid which her work was done (Nov. 14):--
"_I came out, Ma'am, prepared to submit to everything, to be put upon in every way. But there are some things, Ma'am, one can't submit to. There is the Caps, Ma'am, that suits one face, and some that suits another. And if I'd known, Ma'am, about the Caps, great as was my desire to come out to nurse at Scutari, I wouldn't have come, Ma'am._"--_Speech of Mrs. Lawfield_.--Time must be at a discount with the man who can adjust the balance of such an important question as the above, and I for one have none: as you will easily suppose when I tell you that on Thursday last we had 1715 sick and wounded in this Hospital (among whom 120 Cholera Patients), and 650 severely wounded in the other Building called the General Hospital, of which we also have charge, when a message came to me to prepare for 510 wounded on our side of the Hospital who were arriving from the dreadful affair of the 5th November from Balaklava, in which battle were 1763 wounded and 442 killed, besides 96 officers wounded and 38 killed. I always expected to end my Days as Hospital Matron, but I never expected to be Barrack Mistress. We had but half an hour's notice before they began landing the wounded. Between one and 9 o'clock we had the mattresses stuffed, sewn up, laid down--alas! only upon matting on the floor--the men washed and put to bed, and all their wounds dressed. I wish I had time. I would write you a letter dear to a surgeon's heart. I am as good as a _Medical Times_! But oh! you Gentlemen of England who sit at Home in all the well-earned satisfaction of your successful cases, can have little Idea from reading the newspapers of the Horror and Misery (in a Military Hospital) of operating upon these dying, exhausted men. A London Hospital is a Garden of Flowers to it.
We have had such a Sea in the Bosphorus, and the Turks, the very men for whom we are fighting, carry in our Wounded so cruelly, that they arrive in a state of Agony. One amputated Stump died 2 hours after we received him, one compound Fracture just as we were getting him into Bed--in all, twenty-four cases died on the day of landing. The Dysentery Cases have died at the rate of one in two. Then the day of operations which follows....