But Military Hospitals are entirely different in sundry essential respects. I think a non-commissioned officer, Assistant Ward-Master for instance, ought to make his rounds every night. When once such a service takes place, every hour is better than three or four times a night. He must be “up to” sundry things--taking the wards in uncertain rotation, sometimes returning suddenly on his steps, &c., &c., &c. It will be worth securing, if possible (this parenthesis will be understood), that the Nurse’s water-closet should be within her room, if not, as close to it as may be. [Sidenote: Present State of Night-Nursing in Military Hospitals.] 29. The following extraordinary system of Night Nursing is that which prevails in the Army at present: The “nursing is managed” either by means of patients “told off in watches” through the night for the purpose of attending to other patients, or by means of soldiers sent in from the ranks to attend specially upon each bad case; or by Orderlies “arranging it among themselves,” without any exemption meanwhile from day duty. Upon each and all of these systems or no-systems it is hardly necessary to make any comment. It is difficult to tell which is the worst. In the principal, indeed the only General Hospital in England, “Nursing is managed by comrade-patients told off in three watches of two hours each for the night.” [_sic._] “Orderlies are likewise warned and often sit up for the purpose.” These passages are given _verbatim et literatim_, because they are so remarkable. And it is necessary to add that these patients being the relapses among the “Invalids” are nearly the worst cases we have. Were it the report of a Head-Nurse in a Civil Hospital to her Resident Medical Officer, it would undoubtedly cost her her place. One scarcely knows whether to pity more the sick patient or the orderly patient. One scarcely knows how to estimate the amount of medical comforts intended to be consumed by the sick patient which will actually be consumed by the sitting-up patient, and necessarily so. And the expedient which turns over the man who is too ill to be left at all to the care of men who ought to be recovering themselves, but who are pulled out of their beds for two hours to _nurse_ (for the first time perhaps in their lives,) and a very “serious” case too, is to say the least of it a singular one.