After her return to England, in 1856, the Government as well as Queen Victoria and the public were not slow to acknowledge her splendid services. While the Queen presented her with a cross set with diamonds, the people subscribed a fund of several hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of enabling her to found an institution for the training of a superior order of nurses in connection with the St. Thomas’s and King’s College Hospitals. Miss Nightingale also enriched the medical literature by two valuable books, “Notes on Nursing” and “Notes on Hospitals,” in which she gave the results of her lifelong observations. The example of Miss Nightingale had much to do with calling forth the exertions of American women during the Civil War. As soon as there were wounded soldiers to heal, and military hospitals to serve, the patriotic and benevolent women of America remembered the great work of Florence Nightingale, and hastened to the front. As A. W. Calhoun states in his “Social History of the American Family,” by 1864 there were busy in the North 250 women physicians. Women planned and organized also the “U. S. Sanitary Commission,” for the alleviation of the sufferings of the battlefield. Its pre-eminent utility was universally recognized. It caused likewise several great charity fairs, the last two of which were held in New York and Philadelphia and yielded $1,000,000 and $1,200,000 respectively. Among the female physicians, who did service during the Civil War, the most noteworthy was =Dr. Mary E. Walker=. Having studied medicine at the Medical College in Syracuse, N. Y., she was the first woman commissioned to serve on the surgical staff of any army in time of war. On assuming her duties as surgeon in the war, she found hospital efficiency and hoopskirts incompatible; so she sacrificed the skirt and donned a man’s coat and trousers. In recognition of her able services Congress not only awarded her a Medal of Honor, but also allowed her—the only instance in history—by a special act to continue to wear male attire. Dr. Walker declared many times that her sole reason for advocating dress reform for women were hygienic ones. A real pioneer in her profession, she also maintained for many years a farm for sufferers from tuberculosis and carried on a school for prevention of that disease modelled after a plan of her own. Among the women, whose names appear in the history of the Civil War, one of the most brilliant was =Miss Clara Barton=. Devoting herself to the care of the wounded soldiers, she won for herself as superintendent of the hospitals in the army of the James the surname “the Florence Nightingale of America.” During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 she joined the German branch of the Red Cross Society, that noble institution, which in 1859 had been founded by Henry Durant, a citizen of Geneva, Switzerland.