[Sidenote: Practical Superiority of the Second.] 5. Practically, it is of little avail to superintend, ever so carefully, the issue of extras to the sick, unless there is permission and opportunity to pour the nourishment, perhaps in continual drops, down the throat of reluctant agony, or delirium, or stupor. And it is of little avail to have this permission, unless there be also that of raising the decent covering under which cholera, erysipelas, or the oppression of long recumbency, or the discharging wound, or the recent operation lie, and seeing to matters within. It is a further question, whether the painful cleansing of painful wounds, and the important minor dressings, as poulticing, which things, generally speaking, never have been done, and never will be done by surgeons, are best left to nurses, orderlies, or the patients themselves. [Sidenote: Its real and great Difficulties.] 6. At the same time, nothing is more pernicious than to under-rate the objections of opponents. There is no doubt that the admission of women to ward service is beset with difficulties. These Naval and Military Hospitals are, and must ever be, peculiar Hospitals, essentially different in important details from the Civil Hospitals. Sisters of Mercy, as regards the ward service, are decorous and kind, and sometimes inefficient and prudish. Nurses are careful, efficient, often decorous, and always kind, sometimes drunken, sometimes unchaste. Misconduct of women is far more pernicious in a Military or Naval Hospital than in any other, as regards the result of things--the crime is, of course, equally crime everywhere. [Sidenote: Condense numbers as much as possible.] 7. It appears to me desirable to simplify and condense, as much as possible, female service in these Hospitals. Let there be as few women, and these few as efficient and as respectable as can be. Let all that can really be done by men be so done. [Sidenote: Only Head Nurses.] 8. Head-nurses are alone, I think, desirable to be employed; I mean persons of the character, responsibility, and efficiency, of head-nurses in other Hospitals. [Sidenote: Classify the Patients.] 9. The patients should be distinctly classed, though, of course, this is not the Female Superintendent’s business. There are many pros and cons to the formation of convalescent wards. It is a question whether convalescent or chronic patients require female nurses at all. Of such chronic cases, probably 100 would be efficiently served by one nurse, having orderlies under her. Of acute cases, probably, one nurse should take charge of not more than fifty, possibly not more than forty. [Sidenote: Qualification of Nurses.] 10. The nurses should be strong, active women, of not less than thirty, nor, I think, more than sixty years of age, of unblemished character, and should be irreversibly dismissed for the first offence of unchastity, drunkenness, or dishonesty, or proved impropriety of any kind. [Sidenote: Wages.]