During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost uninterruptedly against various bodily ailments, all of which had their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend, "health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he likewise occupied himself with studies of the Stock Exchange, banking, geology, physiology, and higher mathematics. In 1875 he wrote his "Criticism of the Gotha Program"--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., No. 18)--which contains some very important data as to Marx's attitude to the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself. He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877 and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and set about arranging his manuscripts and getting the second volume of "Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M. Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this recognition had come was already a ruin. Bronchial catarrh, inflammation of the lungs, spasmodic asthma, together with the loss of his wife on December 2, 1881, and of his eldest daughter (Mme. Longuet) in January, 1883, gave the finishing stroke to his enfeebled body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge, dated March 15, 1883: