The periodic nervous disorders she suffered appear to have been directly related to her sense of usefulness. When she was not working, her diary entries often begin “Have been sad all day,” or “This was one of the most down-spirited days that ever comes to me.” She once remarked that nothing made her so sick of life as to feel she was wasting it. As long as she was needed, admired, demanded, she could perform near miracles of self-denial and courageous action. When the crisis ebbed, she became despondent and sick, requiring attention of a different sort. As a single woman, often removed from her family, she had no other way to attract notice than to excel as an individual. When such an opportunity faded, or when she found herself an object of criticism, she was, in several senses, prostrated. When her interest was again aroused by the chance of giving service, her health and spirits rebounded. Battling for Ratification [Illustration: _Jean-Henri Dunant_] Clara Barton arrived in Great Britain in late August 1869 with no definite plans. Her doctors had ordered rest and a change of scene. She toured London, visited Paris, then proceeded to Geneva. She thought she might stay in Switzerland, but the depressing fall weather changed her mind; she moved to Corsica, seeking sun and wishing to visit the haunts of her longtime hero, Napoleon I. She was ill, edgy, and demanding. Corsica, although beautiful, did not suit her and by March she was back in Geneva. Here, by chance, she was introduced to Dr. Louis Appia, a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This organization was the result of the Geneva Convention of 1864, which produced a treaty dealing with the treatment of wounded and sick soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians under wartime conditions. The convention was inspired by a book entitled _Un Souvenir de Solferino_ (A Memory of Solferino), in which author Jean-Henri Dunant described the horrors of the Battle of Solferino. At the time of her meeting with Appia, she had not heard of the Geneva Convention nor of Dunant. When she finally read Dunant’s work, she must have identified strongly with it, for he expressed perfectly the concern for the individual which had prompted Barton’s Civil War aid: “A son idolized by his parents, brought up and cherished for years by a loving mother who trembled with alarm over his slightest ailment; a brilliant officer beloved by his family, with wife and children at home; a young soldier who had left sweetheart or mother, sisters or old father to go to war; all lie stretched in the mud and dust, drenched in their own blood.”