floor. We had a number of folding beds for emergency, and we had
no rules as to overcrowding. In the morning the authorities would
clear out as many patients as we wished. Sometimes we were hard
put to it to find room for them all, but we always managed somehow,
and we never refused admission to a single patient on the score of
want of room. The authorities soon discovered the capacity of the
hospital for dealing with really serious cases, and as a result our beds
were crowded with injuries of the gravest kind. What appealed to us
far more was the appreciation of the men themselves. We felt that we
had not worked in vain when we heard that the soldiers in the
trenches begged to be taken "a l'Hopital Anglais."

The condition of the men when they reached us was often pitiable in
the extreme. Most of them had been living in the trenches for weeks
exposed to all kinds of weather, their clothes were often sodden and
caked with dirt, and the men themselves showed clear traces of
exposure and insecure sleep. In most cases they had lain in the
trenches for hours after being wounded, for as a rule it is impossible
to remove the wounded at once with any degree of safety. Indeed,
when the fighting is at all severe they must lie till dark before it is
safe for the stretcher-bearers to go for them. This was so at Furnes,
but at Antwerp we were usually able to get them in within a few hours.
Even a few hours' delay with a bad wound may be a serious matter,
and in every serious case our attention was first directed to the
condition of the patient himself and not to his wound. Probably
he had lost blood, his injury had produced more or less shock,
he had certainly been lying for hours in pain. He had to be got
warm, his circulation had to be restored, he had to be saved
from pain and protected from further shock. Hot bottles, blankets,
brandy, and morphia worked wonders in a very short time, and