se
varieties met every case in hospital except the small number which
required slops and cordials, or something very unusual. By this
clearance, time was saved to such an extent that punctuality became
possible, and the refusal of food almost ceased.

All these details point to the essential badness of the system of
requisitions. In the old days, when war was altogether a mass of
formalities,--and in peace times, when soldiers and their guardians had
not enough to do, and it was made an object and employment to save the
national property by hedging round all expenditure of that property with
difficulties, the system of requisitions might suit the period and the
parties. Amidst the rapid action and sharp emergencies of war it is
out of place. It was found intolerable that nothing whatever could be
had,--not a dose of medicine, nor a candle, nor a sheet, nor a spoon or
dish, nor a bit of soap,--without a series of permits, and applications,
and orders, and vouchers, which frittered away the precious hours,
depressed the sick, worried their nurses, and wasted more of money's
worth in official time, paper, and expensive cross-purposes than could
possibly have been saved by all the ostentatious vigilance of the
method. The deck-loads of vegetables at Balaklava, thrown overboard
because they were rotten before they were drawn, were not the only
stores wasted for want of being asked for. When the Scutari hospitals
had become healthy and comfortable, there was a thorough opening-out of
all the stores which had before been made inaccessible by forms. No
more bedsteads, no more lime-juice, no more rice, no more beer, no
more precious medicines were then locked away, out of the reach or the
knowledge of those who were dying, or seeing others die, for want of
them.

One miserable consequence of the cumbrous method was, that there was no
certainty at any hour of some essential commodity not falling short. It
would have been a dismal day for the most suffering of the patients when
there was not fuel enough to cook "extras," if Miss Nightingale had not
providently bought four boat-loads of wood to meet such a contingency.
It was a dreadful night in the hospital, when, as cholera patients were
brought in by the score, the surgeons found there were no candles to be
had. In that disease, of all maladies, they had to tend their patients
in the dark all night; and a more shocking scene can scarcely be
conceived.

Every great influx of