“Medical assistance would naturally be expected by the invalid as soon as he found himself in a place of shelter, but many lay waiting for their turn until death anticipated the doctor. The medical men toiled with unwearied assiduity, but their numbers were inadequate to the work.” The great hospital at Scutari is a quadrangle, each wing nearly a quarter of a mile long, and built in tiers of corridors and galleries, one above the other. The wounded men had been brought in and laid on the floor, side by side, as closely as they could lie, so that Kinglake was writing quite literally when he spoke of “miles of the wounded.” Rotting beneath an Eastern sky and filling the air with poison, Miss Nightingale counted the carcasses of six dead dogs lying under the hospital windows. And in all the vast building there was no cooking apparatus, though it did boast of what was supposed to be a kitchen. As for our modern bathrooms, the mere notion would have given rise to bitter laughter; for even the homely jugs and basins were wanting in that palace of a building, and water of any kind was a rare treasure. How were sick men to be “nursed,” when they could not even be washed, and their very food had to be carried long distances and was usually the worst possible! Miss Nightingale—the Lady-in-Chief—had the capacity, the will, the driving power, to change all that. A week or two ago I had some talk with several of the old pensioners who remember her. The first to be introduced to me has lost now his power of speech through a paralytic stroke, but it was almost surprising, after all these long years that have passed between the Crimean day and our own day, to see how well-nigh overwhelming was the dumb emotion which moved the strong man at the naming of her name. The second, who was full of lively, chuckling talk, having been in active service for a month before her arrival in the Crimea, and himself seen the wondrous changes she wrought, was not only one of her adorers—all soldiers seem to be that—but also overflowing with admiration for her capability, her pluck. To him she was not only the ideal nurse, but also emphatically a woman of unsurpassed courage and efficiency.