The reasons why all these things must be clearly settled beforehand are these:-- I. Adverse Medical Officers will make all use of counter-regulations. II. Medical Officers who give fair play will find it impossible to settle the matter, if, on ordering, _e. g._, leeches, the Orderly shows Rule so and so by which he does it, and the Nurse Rule so and so by which she does it. The existence of the old regulations and the arrival of the new ones, about the Medical Staff Orderlies, were made great use of against our work, by some of the Medical Officers, after the heavy pressure of the war was over. So, at Scutari, a Principal Medical Officer took away and would not restore the practice of the nurses giving medicines, in which he was borne out by an existing rule. Contradictory rules are miserable things. Unless the Matron’s authority is supported by the Principal Medical Officer the Patients always suffer. The Nurse is the only proper person to be responsible for the directions of the Medical Officers being carried out in a General Hospital. III. It will enable the Matron to stop all nonsensical prudery, on the part of the nurses, and to require that they should do what they undertake to do, and not pass off to an Orderly, still less to a patient, the duties they should discharge themselves. As a general rule there is a good deal of this false modesty on the part of Nurses, especially of Head Nurses. In individual cases it is a serious thing to shake even false ideas of decorum: in laying down general Rules it is the more important to lay down as duties what are such. Suppose an application of what the French call “la petite chirurgie” ordered. The Head Nurse “never dreams of doing such things.” The Nurse, following her superior’s false shame of duty, transfers the business to an ignorant patient. In some cases great harm has arisen thereby to the Patient. In other cases, but not the majority, after such an order given, the Head Nurse goes quietly to the bed, draws the curtain round it, and makes the application herself--saying “she always did that herself, as it was a business requiring care, as the patient was often disposed to resist, and as she was thus certain that it was properly and effectively done.” I have always admired and respected such women; but they are not the majority. Very often patients are allowed or left to do things for themselves, which they cannot do properly, or when they ought not to be trusted to inflict the pain on themselves which doing things properly often causes.