The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

S. 6. 0.

Scutari and its Bospitals._ By the Hon. and
Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne. Dickinson,
BroViers.
Übe noblest and ghastliest of narratives. Let
us confess at once that we almost envy the good
man who has written it the of what-
ever he has gone through in his endeavour to al-
leviate the sufferings of our heroic soldiers in their
terrible pest-houses upon the shores of the Bos-
phorus. It is not nowadays that the English
public need be reminded that in the Honourable

Band Reverend Sydney Godolphin Osborne may be
recognised one of the most genuine, because one of
the most practical, energetic, and laborious of
living philanthropists. His claims upon the popular
respect are by this time, we conceive, pretty
widely known. They require no specific mention
from us. They have long been scarcely less a
fruitful source of interest than a theme of general
and unaffected admiration. Yet the singleness of
purpose, the gentleness of heart, the untiring zeal
and unconquerable determination by which Mr.
Osborne's charitable efforts have been hitherto con-
spicuously characterised, have never yet been
brought so directly under the notice of his fellow-
countrymen as they have been very recently,
through the medium of the humane enterprise
which conducted him to a memorable and deplo-
rable lecality in the neighbourhood of Constanti-
nople. lu the thin volume before us, embellished
with five coloured lithographs illustrative of the
enthralling subjects described in the eight chapters
of the letterpress, we have the succinct but
sufficient record of this somewhat notable un-
dertaking. If we are not very much mis-
taken it will be regarded by the future
annalists of the present War, as a blue-book not a
jot less remarkable in its way than that larger one
which a little later on will comprise the whole of
the ample catechism of Mr. Roebuck's Committee
of Inquiry into the condition of the Army before
Sebastopol. It is a lamentable pendant to the
description of the horrible mismanagement in the
Crimea, this commemoration of the (if possible)
yet more horrible mismanagement on the Bospho-
rus. The frightful story here told of our soldiers'
sufferings at Scutari is the miserable sequel of the
narrative of their preliminary sufferings at Bala-
kla;va. It would be difficult, we conjecture, for
even the most callous to glance over the account
here given of the former by Mr. Osborne, without
profound emotions—emotions of poignant grief,
swallowed up before very long in those of scarcely
utterable indignation.
Altogether, it seems, Mr. Osborne was not mono
than six weeks at Constantinople. But within the
compass of those six weeks how much of good
were his kind hand and gentle heart, his clear
judgment and tender couttniserwion, his en-
ergy and benevolence enabled to accomplish
Invited to assume the honourable and respon-
sible office of almoner of the Times Fund—
Mr. Osborne preferred to go, on his own account,
untrammelled by any ' positive engagement.
" Within twenty-four hours from the time I made
up my mind ou the subject," he slys, "I started
with my son for Constantinople." Arriving at his
destination on the Bth of November, 1854, he took
his departure on his return homewards from the
Turkish capital on the 19th of December. During
the interval between which dates Mr. Osborne co-

opf.rated, lieartanil-;oul, with Mr. Macdonald, the
able and efficient Times Commissioner. The Chief
Authority, he tells us, was clearly under the delusion
" That nothing was wanting !" Whereas almost
everything was found wanting by Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Macdonald, and Mr. Stafford, and Miss
Nightingale. What some of the most glaring of
the deficiencies were, this comment upon Scutari
and its Hospitals" sufficiently indicates. It de-
scribes, without the smallest exaggeration, the state
in which the writer found both the Barrack Hos-
pital and the General Hospital, the condition in
which he left them, and the contrast presented by
each to the great French Military Hospital at Para.
Speaking of the latter, Mr. Osborne can scarcely find
adequate words in which to express his amazement
and admiration. " The French," he exclaims "are
certainly a most wonderful people, at home any-
where. I found it difficult to believe that the
order, quiet, regularity of service, and perfect ma-
chinery of this hospital could be the growth of but
a few months,• and that too in a foreign land.
One element was obvious throughout—system.
Every one seemed to have his own particular sphere
of duty, and quietly to set about it. Nothing
seemed left to chance : there was a certain import-
ance given to even the smallest matter of detail."
Adding, with marked emphasis, a little further on

—" It not merely that the contrast with
our own sad bungling execution was so mani-
fest, but I am in justice bound to say, I never'
anywhere saw a system that scented to me so
perfectly organised and so cleverly carried out" as
in the management of this same French military
ho .pital at Pera. To which perfection of organi-
sation and consummate skill of management, Mr.
Osborne presents, we repeat, in ghastly contrast,
the terrible disorganisation and disastrous misma-
nagement witnessed by him both in the British
General Hospital and the British Barrack
Hospital at Scutari. Recounting his expe-
riences in regard to the latter, he tells us
that he agreed fur a time to take pastoral charge
of a particular portion of the Barrack Hospital—
remarking significantly in another part of his
narrative (as an evidence of the labour requir-
ing to be gone through by those in attendance
when
less than upon the sick in that and , the adjoining esta-
blishment))
btehaau lit
t ihtelneft Scutari " there
must have four miles of ground
occupied in lines of beds "
_stretched out upon
those beds men, presenting to view almost every
imaginable example of mutilation and suffer-
ing. Passing from these terrible sceoes
of human misery, he infirm us that " With
the, exception of the Priests in attendance
on the Catholic patients, and the `Sisters'
terinB to all," he seldom met any one in the
wards while he continued to visit them. Wards,
these were, set.apart for the victims of perhaps the
direst scourge of all in thoSe hospitals, the dysentery,
or diarrhoea, or Varna-fever, as it was variously
called by the soldiers themselves. Scarcely any-
thing, we are fold, could well be more hideous or
more hopeless than the condition into which the
hapless occupants of these wards were plunged im-
mediately 4ipon their entrance into them—without
the merest show,-it seems, -of anything in the way
of medical alleviation. Over the porch might have
been written with awful appropriateness the super-
scription placed by Dante over the entrance to the
Inferno. Yet, says Mr. Osborne, "In this cruel
scene of filthy neglect, I can with truth say, 1 was
never called to one dying man who uttered a mur-
mur against those who thus treated him and his
comrades." Nay, he describes them as very difle-
rendy occupied, namely, as " listening with every
sentiment of grateful delight to the invitations,
the promises, of Him who left his borne in heaven
to contend to death, for every penitent who should
trust his soul to Him," Besides imparting spiritual
consolations to the dying, Mr. Osborne undertook
now and then commissions from them of remem-
brance to " all at home, all inquiring friends,"
observing, as be records the circumstance—" There
was little else I could ever dO for them—they said
so, and-gave a grateful pressure to the extended.'
hand (in one instance the fine dying fellow kissed
it)—then, the ' God bless you, Sir.' A sweet re-
ward of itself,• that benediction of the expiring
soldier to the ears-of our bray.e-hearted philanthro-
pist.
As most of our readers are already aware, Mr.
Osborne was not alone in his self-imposed toil of
benevolence. There was, for example, his ever-
active and untiring colleague Mr. Macdonald, the
Times commissioner. And besides Mr. Macdonald,