Upon the breaking out of the war, Miss Dix, who for years had been engaged in philanthropic work, saw here another requirement for her services and hurried to Washington to offer them to her country. She found her first work in nursing soldiers who had been wounded by the Baltimore mob.[9] Upon June 10, 1861, she received from the War Department, Simon Cameron at that time 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.