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 STATE BEFORE THE HUERICANE. 133 merely negative proof, for in October he de- chap, spatched to the Levant his principal medical officer with instructions to inquire into the state of the hospitals. Dr Hall, obeying these orders, went down to the Levant, passed some weeks in examining the hospitals, and reported that their state was ' as good as could be expected ; ' but this was not all, for whilst at Constantinople (after having been wounded at Inkerman), Sir George Brown reported to Lord Raglan that he had minutely examined our hospital establishment at Scutari and ' found it in a very satisfactory ' state.' (}^) With such information to guide him, and none other as yet counteracting it, Lord Eaglan perforce believed that all must be going on well. It was only from civilians and from England that Lord Eaglan afterwards learnt what we now indeed know to have been the true state of our Levantine hospitals, and we shall see him then taking a step which proved to be exactly the right one. A want of men not only versed in organisa- tion and management, but also well armed with authority, and aware that they might use it with boldness — this would seem to have been the main cause of almost all that went wrong in the internal administration of the establishments. Though not in sufficing numbers, a staff of medical officers of various ranks — men devoted to their professional duties as physicians and surgeons — had been brought together at Scutari, but they all, it seems, found cast upon them a load of strictly medical work ; and there was