In the large room in which sixty men were lying, some on stretcher-beds, some on mattresses, and many on the floor, the boards were covered with blood and filth like a shambles. Round many of the sufferers pools of pus had formed on the floor, and the smell was terrible. Here, where these brave men were dying, the atmosphere was intolerable, stifling, asphyxiating. As their eyes roamed round that house of suffering instinctively searching for relief, they rested at intervals on small glass windows set high up in the staring whitewashed wall. Through the latticed panes they could see small squares of far blue sky, and now and then there flitted past one of the white doves that Moslems regard as sacred, on its way to the willows on the bank of the Tutchenitza. Presently the antiseptic dressings were exhausted altogether, and I had to fall back upon coloured prints from the bazaars for bandages, and to plug the wounds with plain cotton-wool, of which we had a large supply. This was non-absorbent, and naturally when treated in this way the wounds became frightfully repulsive. It was impossible to keep the tissues healthy, and all I could do was to go round on my hands and knees from one man to another, literally scraping the maggots out of the wounds either with my finger or an instrument. The unfortunate men were saturated with blood and pus from their wounds, and covered with maggots which lodged in the festering tissues. Often and often, as I went round the "wards"--save the mark--plodding on almost in despair against the dreadful odds, I have taken the plugging of cotton-wool out of a gaping wound, and found underneath it a nest of maggots, feeding on the flesh of the still living man, who would thank me with a look for temporarily relieving him of the torture. In one small ward with five beds in it, I had five men who were the finest specimens of humanity that I ever saw in my life. I became greatly attached to them, as they did also to me; and it was pathetic to see their gratitude for the most trifling service. One of them, with his strong aquiline face and piercing eyes, reminded me very much of a statue of Dante which I had seen in the market-place of Verona. My patient had been shot through the thigh. The bone had been dreadfully smashed, and the whole leg was a mass of gangrened flesh. If I could have operated, I might have saved his life; but without antiseptic dressings, and without the possibility of subsequent careful nursing, an operation was out of the question, and I had to watch him suffering day by day dying literally by inches.