There was one failure in the work of the Nightingale Fund which led Miss Nightingale to write a new book, than which none ever cost her more labour. In 1867 the Midwifery School established in King's College Hospital[120] had to be closed owing to the high rate of mortality in the lying-in wards. As soon as the figures were brought to Miss Nightingale's notice, she set to work in examining the whole subject of mortality in lying-in wards. She soon found that no trustworthy statistics of mortality in child-bed had yet been collected. She searched for them throughout this country and from foreign hospitals and doctors. She discovered that in lying-in wards everywhere the death-rate was many times the amount of that which took place in home deliveries. This fact showed that public attention should at once be called to the subject, and at the same time it opened up larger questions. There was one school of medical opinion which held that the mortality must in the nature of things be large in lying-in wards; there was another which held that the high rate of mortality therein might be prevented. The inquiries which Miss Nightingale had made for the Crown Princess of Prussia[121] inclined her to the latter view, and she pursued her researches in all directions, collecting an immense mass of information and calling in the assistance of sanitary engineers and other authorities. It should be remembered in all this that the introduction of antiseptics has much altered the conditions since the time of Miss Nightingale's work now under consideration. Materials for a book accumulated, but time to put them into shape was wanting. Dr. Sutherland, on whose assistance she mainly relied, was no more able than she herself to give undivided attention to the subject; but at last with his help the book was written. It was published in October 1871, with the title _Introductory Notes on Lying-in Institutions_. The book did for this special subject something of the same service which _Notes on Hospitals_ had done in the general sphere. Miss Nightingale showed by statistical evidence that many lying-in wards and institutions were pest-houses; she showed the importance of isolation and extreme cleanliness; and furnished model rules, plans and specifications for sanitary lying-in hospitals. In the latter pages, the book was an extension of the _Notes on Nursing_ to this special branch. She urged the importance of training-schools for midwives; described the ideal of an institution of the kind; and pleaded for "Midwifery as a Career for Educated Women." There was much agitation at the time for the admission of women to the medical profession. Miss Nightingale in a letter addressed "Dear Sisters," suggested that there was "a better thing for women to be than 'medical men,' and that is to be _medical women_." She was in the country when the book was passing through the press; and Dr. Sutherland, in sending a last revise with some suggestions of his own,