The aspect of Miss Nightingale's work, touched upon in this chapter, adds another to the accumulation of difficulties with which she had to deal. It was the one which troubled her most. "In this sink of misery, in this tussle of life or death," she felt the bitter futility of personal grievances and religious differences. It is worry, more than work, that kills; and the religious difficulty was perhaps the last straw which caused the Lady-in-Chief to break down, as we shall hear in the next chapter, under her heavy load of responsibility and care. CHAPTER IX TO THE CRIMEA--ILLNESS (May-August 1855) For myself, I have done my duty. I have identified my fate with that of the heroic dead.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (private notes, 1855). In the spring of 1855 Miss Nightingale decided to leave Scutari for a while in order to visit the hospitals in the Crimea. The conditions at Scutari were now greatly improved. Sanitary works had been executed. The hospitals were better supplied. The pressure in the wards, caused by the terrible winter before Sebastopol, was relieved. There were only 1100 cases in the Barrack Hospital, and of those only 100 were in bed. The rate of mortality had fallen from 42 per _cent_ to 22 per _thousand_ of the cases treated. The siege was likely soon to be accompanied by assaults, and the pressure might rather be in the hospitals at Balaclava, where the sick and wounded were if possible to remain, in order to avoid the sufferings of the sea passage to Scutari. * * * * *