§ 118. Although[246] since the seventeenth century several hundreds of special treaties have been concluded between different States regarding the tending of each other's wounded and the exemption of army surgeons from captivity, no general rule of the Law of Nations on these points was in existence until the second half of the nineteenth century other than one prohibiting the killing, mutilation, or ill-treatment of the wounded. A change for the better was initiated by Jean Henry Dunant, a Swiss citizen from Geneva, who was an eye-witness of the battle of Solferino in 1859, where many thousands of wounded died who could, under more favourable circumstances, have been saved. When he published, in 1861 and 1863, his pamphlet, _Un Souvenir de Solférino_, the Geneva _Société d'utilité publique_, under the presidency of Gustave Moynier, created an agitation in favour of better arrangements for the tending of the wounded on the battlefield, and convoked an international congress at Geneva in 1863, where thirty-six representatives of nearly all the European States met and discussed the matter. In 1864 the Bundesrath, the Government of the Federal State of Switzerland, took the matter in hand officially, and invited all European and several American States to send official representatives to a Congress at Geneva for the purpose of discussing and concluding an international treaty regarding the wounded. This Congress met in 1864, and sixteen States were represented. Its result was the international "Convention[247] for the Amelioration of the Condition of Soldiers wounded in Armies in the Field," commonly called "Geneva Convention," signed on August 22, 1864. By-and-by States other than the original signatories joined the Convention, and finally the whole body of the civilised States of the world, with the exception of Costa Rica, Monaco, and Lichtenstein, became parties. That the rules of the Convention were in no wise perfect, and needed to be supplemented regarding many points, soon became apparent. A second International Congress met at the invitation of Switzerland in 1868 at Geneva, where additional articles[248] to the original Convention were discussed and signed. These additional articles have, however, never been ratified. The First Hague Peace Conference in 1899 unanimously formulated the wish that Switzerland should shortly take steps for the assemblage of another international congress in order to revise the Geneva Convention. This Congress assembled in June 1906, thirty-five States having sent representatives, and on July 6, 1906, a new Geneva Convention[249] was signed by Great Britain, Germany, Argentina, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chili, China, Congo Free State, Korea, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, France, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Montenegro, Norway, Holland, Peru, Persia, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Servia, Siam, Sweden, Switzerland, and Uruguay.