Although the nurse was expected to obey the physician's or surgeon's directions, this was an intelligent obedience, using discretion, realising that her obedience to the directions was conditional e key to authority, in having con- trol over others, according to Nightingale, was to have control over oneself by "the silent power of a consistent life Here there could be no pretence or dissimulation. In exercising authority nurses should not "try to 'seem' anything, but to be what we would seem