geneva convention that considered it and her name is attached to it those interested in exploring barton's role in all of this might want to visit the red cross museum in geneva, switzer land. they think highly of ms. barton there. there's an entire room devoted to her, perhaps a more fitting memorial than the rest stop on the new jersey turnpike that we have named for her. [ laughter ] the third path-breaking effort made in 1865 was to devise a system of medical service that could be organized before any hostileities started. her idea was that once the shooting began it was too lit to start collecting supplies or recruit appropriate personnel. she wanted something that would be ready to go whenever it was needed. this again was in sharp contrast to the experience of both sides in the civil war, which had to scramble to put together medical arrangements while the chris skies are was upon them. the first thing barton proposed was that warehouses be built where supplies could be collected and stored so they could be quickly pulled off the shelves and made available. her own house was living proof of this. during the war, barton had solicited supplies as well as distributed them and she had lived with piles of blankets and bandages and bottles of brandy stacked all around her. if you visit her 1865 offices on 7th street you will see how this works. outwardly, you see parlor and desks and some business equipment. but she built a false ceiling above the rooms that when opened was a kind of alad.'scave, holding every sort of medicine and hospital stores all clearly labeled, all ready to be used. it's a wonderful indication of barton's personality and the way she so intricately combined her life and her work. her idea was that the government could use this model on a vast scale, ensuring its ability to react instantly to a military crisis. however, warehouses filled with military stores were not enough for barton. she wanted to have personnel in place, on call, to be brought in to work at a home's notice. and she wanted them trained. bart.shared the war department's skepticism about well-meaning amateurs pouring onto fields or into hospital wards a lot of them, she said, were just in the way. but she didn't think that everybody needed a medical degree to be useful. her idea was to have civilian men and women, schooled in the procedures needed to deal with emergency cases, trained in the proper way to bandable wounds, familiar with medical language so they could respond quickly to doctors' orders, knowledgeable about medicines of the day. she wanted them capable enough and ex-peer whied enough that they could leap into the breach before professional medical help arrived. in short barton wanted the volunteers to be qualified. and then she wanted something more. she wanted each trained worker to have a small kit made up of the most commonly needed supplies for an urgent situation. in 1865 she put a knife, bandages plan day, a salve she had made from laudanum and lan know line, matches and smelling salts in her own kit. she wanted those kits to be handy and she wanted them to be portable. she took one with her to andersonville and required them for staff during the years she headed the red cross. later, she named them first aid kits. army men, of course, ininitially rejected these notions. some of the suggestions, the idea of dparpd earning stores before bat began, for example, also been proposed in the first geneva convention, though barton had not heard of it in 1865 and recalled that the u.s. had declined to agree to that convention. the army said it didn't have time or space to collect supplies. they wanted to discourage volunteers, not train them. they thought any treatment even an urgent situations, ought to be handled by the surgeons. today, of course the military has embraced all of barton's ideas but they only adopted them after they suffered dreadful and unnecessary casualties in the spanish american and first world wars. 1865 barton shared her thoughts with military doctors she had worked with and they liked them. one of those surgeons dr. james dunn, looked at this remarkably advanced program of fixing problems before they happened..a program that would revolutionize emergency assistance. and he sent these words to his wife. "now what do you think of ms. barton," he said? "in my feeble estimation all the generals with all laurels seek into insigg dance beside her, the true heroine of