If the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses had been at first rather coldly welcomed in the surgery wards, their presence when the epidemic of cholera set in was indeed counted a blessing. These trained and devoted women could be entrusted with applying the desperate remedies needed for the disease, which the medical staff would have felt it useless to leave in the hands of orderlies. The stuping, for example, required the most careful attention to have any chance of success. The method of the sisters was to have a large tub of boiling water, blankets torn in squares, and a piece of canvas with a running at each end to hold a stick. The blankets were put into the boiling water, lifted out with tongs and put into the canvas. An orderly at each end wrung the flannel out so dry that not a drop of moisture remained. Then chloroform was sprinkled on the hot blanket, which was then applied to the patient’s stomach. Rubbing with mustard and even with turpentine followed, until the iron grip which had seized the body was released or the end had come. The nurses fought with the dread disease in the most heroic manner, but the proportion saved among the stricken was small indeed. The saddest thing was that it was generally the strong and healthy soldier who was attacked. “One day,” says Sister Aloysius, “a fine young fellow, the picture of health and strength, was carried in on a stretcher to my ward. I said to the orderlies, ‘I hope we shall be able to bring him through.’ I set to work with the usual remedies; but the doctor shook his head, and said, ‘I am afraid it’s all no use, sister.’ When the orderlies, poor fellows, were tired, I set to work myself, and kept it on till nearly the end--but you might as well rub iron; no heat, no movement from his joints. He lived about the usual time--four or five hours.” Week after week the fearful scourge continued, until the avenues to the wards were never free from the two streams of stretchers, one bringing in the stricken, the other carrying out the dead. The spread of the infection was thought to be largely due to the graves not being deep enough, and the air surrounding the hospitals had become putrid.