Everything relating to the distribution of the nurses, the hours of their attendance, their allotment to particular duties, is placed in your hands, subject, of course, to the sanction and approval of the Chief Medical Officer; but the selection of the nurses in the first instance is placed solely under your control, or under that of persons to be agreed upon between yourself and the Director-General of the Army and Ordnance Medical Department, and the persons so selected will receive certificates from the Director-General or the principal Medical Officer of one of the General Hospitals, without which certificate no one will be permitted to enter the Hospital in order to attend the sick.
In like manner the power of discharge on account of illness or of dismissal for misconduct, inaptitude, or other cause, is vested entirely in yourself; but in cases of such discharge or dismissal the cost of the return passage of such person home will, if you think it advisable and if they proceed at once or so soon as their health enables them, be defrayed by the Government.
Directions will be given by the mail of this day to engage one or two houses in a situation as convenient as can be found for attendance at the Hospital, or to provide accommodation in the Barracks if thought more advisable. And instructions will be given to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to afford you every facility and assistance on landing at Constantinople, as also to Dr. Menzies, the Chief Medical Officer of the Hospital at Scutari, who will give you all the aid in his power and every support in the execution of your arduous duties.
The cost of the passage both out and home of yourself and the nurses who may accompany you, or who may follow you, will be defrayed by the Government, as also the cost of house rent, subsistence, &c., &c.; and I leave to your discretion the rate of pay which you may think it advisable to give to the different persons acting under your authority.
In the meanwhile Sir John Kirkland, the Army Agent, has received orders to honor your drafts to the amount of One Thousand Pounds for the necessary expense of outfit, travelling expenses, &c., &c., of which sum you will render an account to the Purveyor of the Forces at Scutari.