not in the least
perturbed, "they must be made as comfortable as possible on stretchers
for the night, and to-morrow we must get some of the others moved away."
And the Sisters took their cue from her, and those 400 patients were all
taken in and looked after with less fuss than the arrival of forty
unexpected patients in most hospitals.

All night long that procession of shattered men brought in on stretchers
never ceased. The kitchen Sister stayed up all night so that each man
should have some hot soup on arrival, and all the other Sisters were at
their posts. Each man was undressed on the stretcher (often so badly
wounded that all his clothing had to be cut off him) and hastily
examined by the doctor. He was then dressed in a clean cotton shirt and
trousers and lifted into bed, either to enjoy a bowl of hot soup, or,
if the case was urgent, to be taken off in his turn to the
operating-room. And though she was no longer young and not at all
strong, there was dear Sister Superior herself all night, taking round
the big bowls of soup or sitting beside the dying patients to cheer and
comfort their last hours. How the men loved her.

It was she who gave the whole tone to the hospital--there the patients
and their welfare were the first consideration and nothing else mattered
in comparison. The hospital was not "smart" or "up to date," the wards
were not even tidy, the staff was inadequate, overworked, and
villainously housed, the resources very scanty, but for sheer
selflessness and utter devotion to their work the staff of that hospital
from top to bottom could not have been surpassed. I never heard a
grumble or a complaint all the time I was there either from a doctor, a
Sister, or an orderly, and I never saw in this hospital a dressing
slurred over, omitted, or done without the usual precautions however
tired or overworked everybody might be.

Of course the art of nursing as practised in England does not exist in
Russia--even the trained Sisters do things every hour that would horrify
us in England. One example of this is their custom of giving strong
narcotic or stimulating drugs indiscriminately, such as morphine,
codeine, camphor, or ether without doctors' orders. When untrained
Sisters and inexperienced dressers do this (which constantly happens)
the results are sometimes very deplorable. I have myself seen a dresser
give a strong hypodermic stimulant to a man with a very serious
haemorrhage. The bleeding vessel