FIELD SURGERY 33 



else. I really do not think there is any nation like them in this 

 respect ; they have certainly kept up the old character nobly in 

 this campaign, that perfect steadiness under the heaviest fire, 

 either when standing still or advancing to the charge. 



It seems a great pity that the Fleet is commanded by such an 

 old muff as Dundas, while there is such a man as Lyons, who 

 seems one of the old Nelson sort, and is almost worshipped by 

 the men, but being only second in command, his hands are much 

 tied. . . . 



You think that the most horrid part of this must be after a 

 battle, when the surgeons are at work. Now by a strange, and 

 perhaps happy, difference of taste this is just the time when I am 

 in my glory ; it is worth weeks of discomfort and inaction, and 

 only comes too seldom ; in fact, the battle of Inkerman and 

 stray cases during the siege are the only surgery we have had. 

 At Alma the regiment was suffering so fearfully from the cholera, 

 nearly a hundred sick at once, that we had enough to do with 

 them, but as soon as I could get a little time to spare (about the 

 middle of the day after the battle) I went down to the General 

 Hospital to see what was going on. I found a number of low 

 buildings surrounding a yard ; on nearly every part of the floor 

 and ground were lying men, English and Russians, with every 

 conceivable sort of horrid wound, and others were being brought 

 in and laid wherever they could find room. In a small hovel a 

 man was having his leg cut off while lying on a heap of straw on 

 the ground, the surgeon and his assistant nearly breaking their 

 backs as they did it. A surgeon in a regiment I knew a little of, 

 seeing me, asked me to assist at several operations which had 

 been waiting some time as he could not get any help. To this I 

 gladly assented, but as we were going to begin, one of the Deputy- 

 Inspectors came up and said he wanted an assistant surgeon to 

 go with some wounded men down to the ships, and that I must 

 go, and the operations must wait; so, accordingly, I had to 

 trudge off by the side of half a dozen araba waggons filled with 

 wounded men three miles down to the beach, an occupation in 

 which I could not be of the slightest earthly use either to the 

 wounded men or any one else, as when they got down there the 

 naval assistant surgeons were ready to receive them. I found 



D 



