(4.) Rate of Pension. The pension will be on a scale graduated on the wages. It will be 30 per cent. of the wages received by the Nurse in her tenth year of service, and the pension granted to Nurses who have served more than ten years, will rise at the rate of 2 per cent. of the wages for every additional year of service, until the pension amounts to 70 per cent. of the wages received during the year preceding its grant, beyond which no higher pension will be granted, except in cases of special devotedness to the public service, when an addition to the regulated rate of any pension may be granted on special recommendation, made by the Superintendent-General of Nurses, setting forth the nature of the service for which such augmented pension is to be granted.[17] But no such pension shall exceed the amount of £50. [Sidenote: (5.) Nurses, Pensioned for Disability, whose Disability ceases, may be called on for Service.] (5.) Any Nurse pensioned for disability, may be called on for service in the event of such disability ceasing before the age of sixty, in which case her wages will be the same as they would have been, had she not been disabled. (6.) Every Nurse who has completed her sixtieth year, must retire from the service on her rate of pension. (7.) Any Nurse, temporarily or permanently disabled in the service, who has served more than five and under ten years, will be entitled to a lower rate of pension, according to the circumstances of each case, as represented by the Superintendent-General. [Sidenote: 18. Number of Nurses to Patients.] 18. Nurses should be selected and appointed by the Superintendent-General of Nurses for each General Hospital, in a proportion not exceeding one nurse for every twenty-five cases. There is nothing so fatal to discipline as to require by regulations what it is known and admitted cannot be performed. Such rules are made to be broken. Therefore, is it not better, instead of fixing a number to fix a limit, and say “not exceeding one to every 25 or 30 patients,” leaving it to the Superintendent-General to economize Nurses, and not appoint the full number permitted, unless when really necessary? In one case she might consider one nurse for fifty or even sixty sufficient; in another, one for every twenty-five might be few enough. Why tie up her hands against economy as well as against extravagance? At the same time it is necessary to state-- (1.) That, by all accounts, at home and abroad, in the English and in foreign armies, the proportion of severe cases is very considerably less, in time of peace, in a Military Hospital than in a Civil one, especially in the surgical wards. (2.) That the Nurse’s time, being relieved of the waste incurred by fetching and waiting for things, the cleaning of the ward being done by Orderlies, and, an important item, the Ward-Master being responsible for the serving the patients’ food, twenty-five sick are not enough, on an average, to occupy, properly, her time.