“Could she,” asks Kinglake, “see them in that strait disband, when she knew but too well that their services were bitterly needed for the shiploads and shiploads of stricken soldiery brought down day by day from the seat of war? Under stress of the question thus put by her own exacting conscience, or perhaps by the simpler commandment of her generous heart, she formed the heroic resolve which was destined to govern her life throughout the long, dismal period of which she then knew not the end. Instead of returning to England, and leaving on the shores of the Bosphorus her band of sisters and nurses, she steadfastly remained at their head, and along with them entered at once upon what may be soberly called an appalling task—the task of ‘nursing’ in hospitals not only overcrowded with sufferers, but painfully, grievously wanting in most of the conditions essential to all good hospital management. “The sisters and salaried nurses,” says Kinglake, “who placed themselves under this guidance were in all forty-six; and Miss Stanley, with great spirit and energy, brought the aid of her whole reinforcement—at first to the naval hospital newly founded at Therapia under the auspices of our Embassy, and afterwards to another establishment—to that fated hospital at Kullali, in which, as we saw, at one time a fearful mortality raged. “Not regarding her mission as one that needs should aim loftily at the reformation of the hospital management, Miss Stanley submitted herself for guidance to the medical officers, saying, ‘What do you wish us to do?’ The officers wisely determined that they would not allow the gentle women to exhaust their power of doing good by undertaking those kinds of work that might be as well or better performed by men, and their answer was to this effect: ‘The work that in surgical cases has been commonly done by our dressers will be performed by them, as before, under our orders. What we ask of you is that you will see the men take the medicines and the nourishment ordered for them, and we know we can trust that you will give them all that watchful care which alleviates suffering, and tends to restore health and strength.’