In the next bed was an Asiatic Turk, whose wound was a peculiar one. A rifle-bullet had struck the top of his skull, and cut a groove longitudinally from front to back through it. I could do but little for the man, except to keep the wound as clean as possible, and the poor fellow suffered great pain. He used to be continually telling me of his wife and children, in some distant Anatolian village, which he knew he would never see again, and he was very grateful for a sympathetic listener. I was always afraid of brain trouble developing, and after about a week of suffering he became delirious through inflammation of the membranes of the brain, and died at last in fearful convulsions. Next to him was a man who had been hit in the shoulder by a piece of a shell. The bone was smashed to pieces, and several days after the battle I took a piece of iron as large as a hen's egg from a great hole near the man's armpit. I asked him to let me amputate the arm at the shoulder joint; but he would not let it be done, and he was still alive some weeks afterwards when I finally left Plevna. The fourth man had been shot in the thigh, and the wound had no chance of healing without proper dressing. I used to squeeze out about a pint of matter from it every day. The fifth patient had been shot in the clavicle, and had a huge ragged wound in the shoulder. I used to stuff it with cotton-wool, and try to keep the maggots from collecting in the cavity; but when I took out the plug of wool, there were always maggots underneath it. Four out of the five were dead before I left the town. In the large room, which contained sixty men, though the space would not properly accommodate more than twenty, I had several cases of blood-poisoning due to the colours "running" in the cheap prints which I was obliged to use for bandages. The dyes got into the wounds, and pyæmia carried off the men like rotting sheep. The food up to this period was still fairly good, and we had plenty of good water. CHAPTER XI. THE HORRORS OF THE HOSPITAL. Some of my Hospital Cases--A Death from Jaundice--Small-pox and Typhoid Fever--Hospital Gangrene--Waiting for the Burial Parties--Horrible Depression--I am slightly wounded--Turkish Florence Nightingales--A Ghastly Case--I am powerless for want of Stores--The Men die off like Sheep--Arrival of a Party of English Doctors--A Welcome Visit--Dr. Bond Moore and Dr. Mackellar--Dr. George Stoker Sick--Interview with Osman Pasha--His Reception of the English Doctors--Osman Pasha's Position--The English Doctors indignant--Osman Pasha justified--A Ride to the Krishin Redoubts--The English Doctors under Fire--My Reasons for leaving Plevna--A Farewell Supper--Mustapha Bey and the Whisky--The Departure of the Wounded--Good-bye to Plevna.