Nor, without such concurrence, can the duties of the Nurses be assigned. At this moment there are extant two sets of Regulations--the old Army Hospital Regulations, and those of 1855 made for the late Medical Staff Corps. In these Regulations, both the former and the latter, every duty a Nurse can discharge is assigned to different men. The responsibility of the ward, the administration of diets and medicines, the application of poultices, fomentations, leeches, enemas, and minor dressings, are all in so many words assigned as the duties of Assistant-Surgeons, of Hospital-Serjeants, and Orderlies; and of Assistant-Surgeons, of Ward-Masters and Orderlies of the Medical Staff Corps. The Regulations in general are being revised;--so much the better. But the new body of Orderlies, announced in the “Gazette” as the Hospital Corps, will, of course, receive rules from the Director-General; and if these things are not settled with him, there will be contradictory rules in operation, which will most materially thwart the working of the Female Service. We have ourselves experienced this, as to the administration of medicines, which one Principal Medical Officer took away from the Nurses, saying that it was the duty of the Assistant-Surgeons, in which he was borne out by an existing Regulation. And it would really seem as if this were the intention of the said Regulation, for it is there laid down that the medicines are to be administered twice-a-day, as if this were a property of medicine. The existence of these Regulations proved also a great stumbling-block in the Castle Hospital, after the war-pressure was over. Unless the Director-General, and in war and abroad, the Principal Medical Officer, are brought into regular communication with the Superintendent-General of Nurses, by the Rules, they will, at every inspection of Hospitals, revert to the procedure of giving orders and making alterations, which in fact amount to reprimands on the Superintendent-General, and on her Matrons, through the medium of some Clerk or Orderly. There should be, therefore, a distinct channel of communication laid down between the Director-General, and in war and abroad, the Principal Medical Officer and the Superintendent-General of Nurses. [Sidenote: 2. Also between Principal Medical Officer and Matron, Staff-Surgeons and Matron, Staff-Surgeons and Nurses, and the qualified subordination of the Matron and Nurses.] 2. Also, and in the same way, there should be distinct rules for direct communication between the Principal Medical Officer of each Hospital, and the Matron, and between the Staff (or equivalent) Surgeons of the Hospital, and the Matron; if not also between these latter and the Nurses.