[3] There are many physical operations where coeteris paribus the danger is in a direct ratio to the time the operation lasts; and coeteris paribus the operator’s success will be in direct ratio to his quickness.  Now there are many mental operations where exactly the same rule holds good with the sick; coeteris paribus their capability of bearing such operations depends directly on the quickness, without hurry, with which they can be got through.

[4] [Sidenote:  Petty management better understood in institutions than in private houses.]

So true is this that I could mention two cases of women of very high position, both of whom died in the same way of the consequences of a surgical operation.  And in both cases, I was told by the highest authority that the fatal result would not have happened in a London hospital.

[Sidenote:  What institutions are the exception?]

But, as far as regards the art of petty management in hospitals, all the military hospitals I know must be excluded.  Upon my own experience I stand, and I solemnly declare that I have seen or known of fatal accidents, such as suicides in delirium tremens, bleedings to death, dying patients dragged out of bed by drunken Medical Staff Corps men, and many other things less patent and striking, which would not have happened in London civil hospitals nursed by women.  The medical officers should be absolved from all blame in these accidents.  How can a medical officer mount guard all day and all night over a patient (say) in delirium tremens? The fault lies in there being no organized system of attendance.  Were a trustworthy man in charge of each ward, or set of wards, not as office clerk, but as head nurse, (and head nurse the best hospital serjeant, or ward master, is not now and cannot be, from default of the proper regulations,) the thing would not, in all probability, have happened.  But were a trustworthy woman in charge of the ward, or set of wards, the thing would not, in all certainty, have happened.  In other words, it does not happen where a trustworthy woman is really in charge.  And, in these remarks, I by no means refer only to exceptional times of great emergency in war hospitals, but also, and quite as much, to the ordinary run of military hospitals at home, in time of peace; or to a time in war when our army was actually more healthy than at home in peace, and the pressure on our hospitals consequently much less.

[Sidenote:  Nursing in Regimental Hospitals.]

It is often said that, in regimental hospitals, patients ought to “nurse each other,” because the number of sick altogether being, say, but thirty, and out of these one only perhaps being seriously ill, and the other twenty-nine having little the matter with them, and nothing to do, they should be set to nurse the one; also, that soldiers are so trained to obey, that they will be the most obedient, and therefore the best of nurses, add to which they are always kind to their comrades.