MILITARY AND NAVAL SURGERY
ranks, and even the Director-General could exercise little authority.
There were also " Apothecaries to the Forces/5 who had been
chemists in civil life, in charge of medical stores and equipment.
In the Crimea, the need for reform became more clamant. The
hospitals were still civil organizations. There were no army
nurses; most of the orderlies were pensioners employed for this duty.
The first attempt to improve matters consisted in recruiting
strong men for the work in place of the feeble old pensioners,
many of whom were unfit to bear a stretcher. The orderlies were
formed into what was called the " Medical Staff Corps." They
were, however, men of scant education, they had received no
special training, and had no officers of their own. The scheme
was therefore doomed to failure from the first.
It was at this stage that FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820-1910)
took the law into her own hands and introduced women nurses
into the hospital at Scutari.1 All the world is familiar with the
story of " The Lady with the Lamp," of her victorious return
to England, and of the fund raised in her honour to endow a
school for nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital. This was opened
in 1860, and it was followed by many other similar schools.2
Although Florence Nightingale did her great work before the
antiseptic era, she revolutionized nursing as a profession, and her
little handbook, Notes on Nursing, is still well worth reading.
To return to the main theme, it was not until after the Crimean
.War in 1857 that there came into being an "Army Hospital
Corps " of specially trained n.c.o.'s and men, with officers, who
were not, however, medical men, but who had been detailed for
this duty from various regiments.
In 1873 this regimental system was abolished, and the corps
became consolidated under its own officers. A further step, in
1884, was the important decision that the corps should be com-
manded by medical officers, the former name of " Medical Staff
Corps " being revived. Eventually, in 1898, came the red-letter
day, when a royal warrant of Queen Victoria inaugurated the
" Royal Army Medical Corps," having all the usual army ranks
and titles, and its own uniform, with the badge bearing the motto,
" In arduis fidelis." *
1 Sir E. T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, 2 vols., 1913
1 L. R. Seymer, A General History of Nursing, 1932 ; M. A. Nutting and L. E. Dock*
History of Nursing, 4 vols., New York, 1907-12
1 Col. Fred-Smith, A Short History of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Aldershot, 1929 -
347