[148] See Bibliography A, No. 67. Mr. Whitfield, the Resident Medical Officer, who had acted since the foundation of the Nursing School as Medical Instructor of the Probationers, resigned that post, and Mr. J. Croft, who had lately become one of the Surgeons to the Hospital, was appointed in his stead. Miss Nightingale saw and corresponded with Mr. Croft, and liked him much. "I have always dreaded," he wrote (Feb. 24, 1873), "remaining a 'stagnant man.'[149] I hope to become, as you would have me, an active and faithful comrade." He gave clinical instruction to the Probationers; delivered courses of lectures--general, medical, and surgical in the several terms--throughout the year, of which he submitted the syllabus to Miss Nightingale, and at her request drew up a "Course of Reading for Probationers." Other members of the Medical Staff gave courses of lectures also, and examinations were made more regular and searching. The answers written by the Probationers, and their notes on the lectures, were from time to time sent in to Miss Nightingale, so that she might gain an idea of the general standard of instruction, and perhaps administer rebuke or encouragement to individual pupils. "I think," Miss Nightingale was told on one occasion, "that the ladies are thoroughly ashamed of the appearance they made at Mr. Croft's last examination, and wish to retrieve themselves." Their good resolutions seem to have been successful, for presently one of the Medical Officers reported that "the answers which I have received this year collectively are much better than in former years, they are indeed exceedingly good." "I read your Case-papers," Miss Nightingale wrote in one of her Addresses, "with more interest than if they were novels. Some are meagre, especially in the history of the cases. Some are good. Please remember that, besides your own instruction, you can give me some too, by making these most interesting cases as interesting as possible by making them accurate and entering into the full history." The new Hospital had greatly increased the demands upon the time of the Matron, Mrs. Wardroper, and left her less able to supervise the Probationers. An Assistant-Superintendent of the School was appointed with the title of Home Sister.[150] It was one of her duties to supplement the lectures and bedside demonstration of the medical officers by regular class-teaching. [149] The reference here was to Miss Nightingale's "Address to the Probationers" (1872) in which she had written: "To be a good nurse, one must be an improving woman; for stagnant waters sooner or later, and stagnant air, as we know ourselves, always grow corrupt and unfit for use. Is any one of us a _stagnant woman_?"