Page:Woman Triumphant.djvu/193

 in general somewhat distrusted the innovation. But in time her work received just recognition and the status of women in the profession became fully established. In 1868 Dr. Blackwell founded the "Woman's Medical College of New York." The later years of her life were spent in England, where she also did much in moulding public opinion along the lines of philanthropy, especially in opening hospitals and dispensaries for women and children.

A few years after Miss Blackwell had received her diploma, another remarkable woman, Florence Nightingale, aroused world-wide admiration by her noble service during the Crimean war of 1853-56. Intensely devoted to the alleviation of suffering, she had since 1849 paid great attention to the sanitary conditions of civilian as well as military hospitals, which in many cases she found rather poor. In 1851 she went into training as a nurse, and when in 1853 war was declared with Russia, and the hospitals on the Bosphorus were soon crowded with the sick and wounded, she offered the English Government to go out and organize a nursing department at Scutari. Starting with a unit of thirty-seven nurses, she arrived at Constantinople when the mortality in the hospitals had become appalling. Seeing clearly the cause for this frightful state in the bad sanitary arrangements of the hospitals, Miss Nightingale devoted incessant labor to the removal of these causes, as well as to the mitigation of their effects, with such success, that in the English army the death-rate fell from 22¼% to only 2¼%.

After her return to England, in 1856, the Government as well as Queen Victoria and the public were not slow to acknowledge her splendid services. While the Queen presented her with a cross set with diamonds, the people subscribed a fund of several hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of enabling her to found an institution for the training of a superior order of nurses in connection with the St. Thomas's and King's College Hospitals. Miss Nightingale also enriched the medical literature by two valuable books, "Notes on Nursing" and "Notes on Hospitals," in which she gave the results of her life-long observations.

The example of Miss Nightingale had much to do with calling forth the exertions of American women during the Civil War. As soon as there were wounded soldiers to heal, and military hospitals to serve, the patriotic and benevolent women of America remembered the great work of Florence Nightingale, and hastened to the front. As A. W. Calhoun states in his "Social History of the American Family," by 1864 there were busy in the North 250 women physicians. Women planned and organized also the "U. S. Sanitary Commission," for the alleviation of the sufferings of the battlefield. Its pre-eminent