Medical Staff Corps men,
and many other things less patent and striking, which would not have
happened in London civil hospitals nursed by women. The medical officers
should be absolved from all blame in these accidents. How can a medical
officer mount guard all day and all night over a patient (say) in
_delirium tremens?_ The fault lies in there being no organized system
of attendance. Were a trustworthy _man_ in charge of each ward, or set
of wards, not as office clerk, but as head nurse, (and head nurse the
best hospital serjeant, or ward master, is not now and cannot be, from
default of the proper regulations,) the thing would not, in all
probability, have happened. But were a trustworthy _woman_ in charge of
the ward, or set of wards, the thing would not, in all certainty, have
happened. In other words, it does not happen where a trustworthy woman
is really in charge. And, in these remarks, I by no means refer only to
exceptional times of great emergency in war hospitals, but also, and
quite as much, to the ordinary run of military hospitals at home, in
time of peace; or to a time in war when our army was actually more
healthy than at home in peace, and the pressure on our hospitals
consequently much less.

[Sidenote: Nursing in Regimental Hospitals.]

It is often said that, in regimental hospitals, patients ought to "nurse
each other," because the number of sick altogether being, say, but
thirty, and out of these one only perhaps being seriously ill, and the
other twenty-nine having little the matter with them, and nothing to do,
they should be set to nurse the one; also, that soldiers are so
trained to obey, that they will be the most obedient, and therefore the
best of nurses, add to which they are always kind to their comrades.

Now, have those who say this, considered that, in order to obey, you
must know _how_ to obey, and that these soldiers certainly do not know
how to obey in nursing. I have seen these "kind" fellows (and how kind
they are no one knows so well as myself) move a comrade so that, in one
case at least, the man died in the act. I have seen the comrades'
"kindness" produce abundance of spirits, to be drunk in secret. Let no
one understand by this that female nurses ought to, or could be
introduced in regimental hospitals. It would be most undesirable, even
were it not impossible. But the head nurseship of a hospital serjeant is
the more essential, the more important, the more inexperienced