The occasion described by Miss Stanley was post-day. Still busier were the awful days on which fresh consignments of sick and wounded arrived from the Crimea. Miss Nightingale has been known, said General Bentinck, to pass eight hours on her knees dressing wounds and administering comfort. There were times when she stood for twenty hours at a stretch, apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labours of her staff, or assisting at the painful operations where her presence might soothe or support. She had, said Mr. Osborne, "an utter disregard of contagion. I have known her spend hours over men dying of cholera or fever. The more awful to every sense, any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying man, the more certainly might her slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him."[148] "We cannot," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her uncle, Mr. Smith (Dec. 18, 1854), "prevent her self-sacrifice for the dying. She cannot delegate as we could wish; but the cases are so interesting and painful; who could leave them when once taken up?--boys and brave men dying who can be saved by nursing and proper diet." It is recorded that on one occasion she saw five soldiers set aside as hopeless cases. The first duty of the overworked surgeons was with those whom there seemed to be more hope of saving. She asked to be given the care of the five men, and the surgeons consented. Assisted by one of her nurses, she tended the cases throughout the night, administering nourishment from her stores, and in the morning they were found to be in a fit condition for surgical treatment.[149] "Miss Nightingale," said a Chelsea pensioner, in recalling his experiences at Scutari, "was always coming in and out. She used to attend to all the worst cases herself. Some of the new men were a bit shy at first, but many a time I've heard her say, 'Never be ashamed of your wounds, my friend.'"[150] "I believe," wrote a Civilian doctor who saw her at work, "that there was never a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice, and sometimes it was wonderful to see her at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible she could be already cognisant."[151] [148] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 26. [149] _Daily News_, June 2, 1855. [150] _Wintle_, p. 113. [151] _Pincoffs_, p. 78, where a particular case in point is recorded.