[207] "The Army Hospital Service," by Captain Douglas Galton, in the _Review_ of July 1, 1883. The practical interest which Queen Victoria took in Army matters may have been a factor in the prompt attempt to remedy the evils to which Miss Nightingale had called attention. In the following year Miss Nightingale obtained, through Lord Wantage, a statement from the War Office (Oct. 17, 1884) "showing how far the recommendations of Lord Morley's Committee had been carried out." There were very few of the evils left unremedied--at any rate on paper. There was one feature of the Hospital Service upon which the inquiries above mentioned threw nothing but praise, and that was the female nursing. Lord Wolseley, whose service dated back, like Miss Nightingale's, to the Crimean War, was particularly emphatic on this point. "I have always thought," he said, "that the presence of lady nurses in our military hospitals was a matter of the first consequence. When, as a General, I have inspected hospitals, I always felt I could not really 'get at' the patients; few men would dare to speak against the orderlies of a hospital, no matter how you may question them, but they would tell what they think very freely to a lady nurse who is attendant upon them. Apart from the incalculable boon which the care and kindness of such ladies confers upon the sick or wounded soldier, I regard their presence in all our hospitals as a most wholesome check upon the whole personnel in them. I am sure that the patients in a ward where there was a lady nurse would always receive the wine, food, etc., ordered them by the doctor, and the irregularities of the orderlies, such as those complained of by Mrs. Hawthorn, could not take place. I am therefore of opinion that it was very wrong to have prevented that lady from entering the wards at Pietermaritzburg, and I think it would be desirable to call attention in the Queen's Regulations to the great advantage of procuring the aid of lady nurses at all stations, both in peace and war."[208] All this is precisely the doctrine preached by Miss Nightingale when she said that the most important function of the female nurse was the education of the male orderly. Lord Wolseley, in the Memorandum just quoted, was speaking from personal experience in South Africa. Subsequent experience in Egypt confirmed his opinions, and in his evidence before the later Committee of Inquiry he was even more emphatic. "The employment of lady nurses to a very large extent in every hospital on service" was the surest way to efficiency. The female nurses at Cairo, Ismailia, and Alexandria were of the "greatest assistance." "It was delightful to go into a ward where there was a female nurse. Their presence made the greatest difference." "If I might so describe them, although it is not perhaps a complimentary way of describing them, they are the best spies in the hospital upon everybody."[209]