its head, an appointment as the
Government Superintendent of Women Nurses. Secretary Stanton,
succeeding him, ratified this appointment, thus placing her in an
extraordinary and exceptional position, imposing numerous and onerous
duties, among them that of hospital visitation, distributing supplies,
managing ambulances, adjusting disputes, etc. But while appointed to
this office by the Government, Miss Dix found herself as a member of a
disfranchised class, in a position of authority without the power of
enforcing obedience, and the subject of jealousy among hospital
surgeons, which largely militated against the efficiency of her
work.[10]

ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.

THE SANITARY COMMISSION.

It has been computed that since the historic period, fourteen thousand
millions of human beings have fallen in the wars which men have waged
against each other. From careful statistics it has also been estimated
that four-fifths of this loss of life has been due to privation,
exposure, and want of care. At an early day the mortality from
sickness was evidently far greater than the above estimate; as late as
the Crimean War, this mortality reached seven-eighths of the whole
number of deaths. Military surgery was formerly but little understood.
The wounded and sick of an army were indebted to the chance aid of
friend or stranger, or were left to perish from neglect. Nothing has
ever been held so cheap as human life, unless, indeed, it were human
rights. But even from times of antiquity we read of women, sometimes
of noble birth, who followed the soldiers to the field, treating the
wounds of friend or lover with healing balms or rude surgical
appliance. To woman is the world indebted for the first systematic
efforts toward relief, through the establishment of hospitals for sick
or wounded soldiers. As early as the fifth century, the Empress Helena
erected hospitals on the routes between Rome and Constantinople, where
soldiers requiring it, received careful nursing.

In the ninth century an order of women, who consecrated themselves to
field work, arose in the Catholic Church. They were called Beguines,
and everywhere ministered to the sick and wounded of the armies of
Continental Europe during its long period of devastating wars.

To Isabella of Spain,[11] she who sold her jewels to fit Columbus for
the discovery of a New World, is modern warfare most indebted for a
mitigation of its horrors, through the establishment of the f