patients was terrible, whether from an epidemic
or after a battle; but experience and devotedness made even this
comparatively easy before the troops turned homewards. The arrival of
a transport was, perhaps, the first intimation of the earlier battles.
Then all was hurry-skurry in the hospitals; everybody was willing to
help, but the effectual organization was not yet ready.

Of every hundred on board the transport, an average of ten had died
since leaving the Crimea. The names and causes of death of these men
ought to be recorded; but the surgeons of the transport are wholly
occupied in despatching their living charge to the hospital; and the
surgeons there have enough to do in receiving them. Attempts are made to
obtain the number and names and injuries of the new patients: there may
or may not be a list furnished from the ship; and the hospital surgeons
inquire from bed to bed: but in such a scene mistakes are sure to arise;
and it was found, in fact, that there was always more or less variation
between the numbers recorded as received or dead and the proper number.
No one could wonder at this who had for a moment looked upon the scene.
The poor fellows just arrived had perhaps not had their clothes off
since they were wounded or were seized with cholera, and they were
steeped in blood and filth, and swarming with vermin. To obtain shirts
and towels was hard work, because it had to be proved that they brought
none with them. They were laid on the floor in the corridors, as close
as they could be packed, thus breathing and contaminating the air which
was to have refreshed the wards within. If laid upon so-called sheets,
they entreated that the sheets might be taken away; for they were of
coarse canvas, intolerable to the skin. Before the miserable company
could be fed, made clean, and treated by the surgeons, many were dead;
and a too large proportion were never to leave the place more, though
struggling for a time with death. It was amidst such a scene that
Florence Nightingale refused to despair of five men so desperately
wounded as to be set aside by the surgeons. The surgeons were right. As
they said, their time was but too little for the cases which were not
hopeless. And Florence Nightingale was right in finding time, if she
could, to see whether there was really no chance. She ascertained that
these five were absolutely given over; and she and her assistants
managed to attend to them through the night. She clea