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CHURCH AND HOSPITAL.
1330
conquest or repression-an instrument which, on the most obvious grounds of economy, it was wise to keep in as effective a condition as possible. And the slave? Simply as one among DURING the Queen’s sojourn in Klorehce, some three the many goods and cliattels connected with real propertyyears ago, iier Majesty was peculiarly interested iri the an asset to be given up in satisfaction of creditors or an heirinstitution of the Misericordia, a brotherhood, dating front loom to be bequeathed in terms of will. No wonder that 1244, devoted to the care of the sick and the transport of we hnd the houses for the accommodation and treatment the dead. Its members recognise no distinction of class of these subjects so well appointed and maintained’ that or occupation, but hold themselves in readiness to repair it was to his observation, if not practice, in them that the to the sick room or the scene of tecident, and render patrician amateur Celsus acquired that knowledge of whatever aid the special circumstances demand. As a disease and its remedies which has given him the name of product of the intimate alliance, having its roots in the tlce "It,ornan Hippocrates." The whole government and first Christian centuries, between the Church and Medi- the life that prevailed under it were in those times the cine, the Misericordia yields to none of the characteristic expression of a sublime selfishnes3, of an estimate of man’s features of Florence in interest, whether humanitarian or duty to his neighbour so perverted or abased as to count aesthetic. Frocked from head to foot in linen of the same for the central cause which incurred the collapse of the colour, the face covered all but the eyes, its little com- "Mistress of the World." The success of Christianity during the 1irst centuries panies thread the thoroughfares by night or day on their philanthropic errand, inspiring the most careless bystander becomes in great part intelligible when its essential with reflections, never inopportune, on the precariousness antagonism to the Pagan dominion is considered. Rome of life and the certainty of death, on the equality shared in represented the apotheosis of Self, in its most egotistic, both respects by mankind and typified in the passing most inhuman aspect. The new power which was to company itself, which includes the prince and the artisan, displace and submerge it had its watchword in the the genius and the mediocrity, undistinguishable in the counter motive of love to one’s neighbour. Humanity, which had long groaned under the former, now sawuniform of the Misericordia. For six centuries this miniature army peculiar to Tuscany through a higher instinct of self-preservation—the deliver. has been on the march, keeping time to " the still, sad ance that awaited it from the latter. In no respect was music of humanity" ; but it is not difficult to trace the contrast more appreciable or more striking than in the its genesis to an epoch far anterior. Organisations, treatment vouchsafed under the new system to the slave, indeed, for the relief of the sick or the disposal of the dead the poor, and the sick. The casual, occasional short. are almost contemporaneous with the healing art-coeval, lived gleams of philanthropy to which the Pagan world was that is to say, with humanity itself. Medicine is an out- not quite extraneous were now caught up, absorbed, and come of the self-preserving instinct, manifested, as Celsus concentrated in the diffused glow of the new religion; has told us, in the most savage tribes, and even, as isolated kindness became organised benevolence; the love Lucretius has finely imagined, in prehistoria man, seek- that announced itself in compassion and relief, from being ing in rudest fashion to repair the wounds received in con- a mark of the individual, was now a master power flict with wild beasts. Side by side with this primitive of the community. All the scattered impulses that attempt at cure developed the endeavour after pre- made for good had taken collective form and expression in vention-the solicitude to appease the offended deity Christianity. The Christian preacher dwelt on the duty whose anger took the form of corporeal or mental owed by the strong to the weak; on the blessedness of visitation. Hence the priesthood, the ministers of the ’, giving more than of receiving; he urged the sanctity of disUnseen, became the mediators between the afflicted tress-" res sacra miserice"-and the ineffably " sweet sense creature and the offended Creator, and, as at the same of providing," till under his doctrine the rich denuded time the sole depositories of such knowledge as was then themselves of their wealth to succour the poor, and patri. possible, they were the dispensers of relief, whether in the cian-statesman and even Empress became humble minisguise of natural remedies or of manual interference. With trants to the wounded or the plague-stricken. The the advent of the Greek medicine under Hippocrates the hospitals the Valetudinaria, the , the power of the priest-physician, already on the wane, passed already existing-were converted into Christian instituaway, to give place to the study of nature and her law?, tions, and took in the whole community; while the under which disease, as well as health, was seen to occur. Fathers of the Church, who, as Puccinotti has proved, The instinct of self-preservation expanded from the indi- preserved the scientific traditions of Greece and Rome, vidual to the community, and State medicine reached its applied these with the skill of cultured intellects, in. culmination in antiquity under Imperial Rome, whose spired by benevolent impulse, to the cure of their inmates. sanitary legislation, including drainage, water-supply, If we were asked to name an early hospital in the Christian the universal diffusion of public baths, and the planting of as contra-distinguished from the Pagan sense, we should waste or marsh lands, is still in some respects a rebuke to point to that opened in Ceesarea by St. Basil in the fourth The practice of medicine was century, where the Saint himself and his brother monks our modern civilisation. itself severely regulated in Rome, and the Lex Cornelia, in not only tended, but treated the sick with the best knowsatisfaction for the errors of the practitioner, was followed ledge the times could command. Not only so, but lay by more stringent enactment, till the whole rights of the brethren were employed to supplement the work for which patient, mental or corporeal, were elaborately safeguarded the rapidly extencting wards became undermanned, and under Justinian. physicians and non-professional helpers like those of the But all this practice and legislation was in obedience to Tuscan Misericordia bore a hand, carrying the sick or the lower self-preserving instinct, and to that alone. Hos- injured from town and country, often on their shoulders, pitals there were under the Pagan system, but it is not diffi. to the hospital. Many are the epistles from St. Basil to culb to trace their inspiration and genesis. Taking Imperial Eustachius Medicus (son of Oribasius, physician to Julian Rome as the highest development of that system, we the Apostate) in which the Greek medicine receives its find her Valetttdinaria in full and well-diffused activity— due meed of praise, and in which the transition of the hospitals, that is to say, for the care and cure of the soldier, Greco-Latin therapeutics to the medicina monastica-the and even, on patrician estates, for treatment of the slave. But lineal parent at Salerno and other schools of the modern how was the soldier regarded? Merely as an instrument of. practice-is clearly set forth. CHURCH AND HOSPITAL.
--
1331 We need not go down the noble list of such Christian and dirt on the rafters and amid the books, papers, reports, In the out-patient receiving room there is a hospitals as St. Basil’s, given with surpassing interest of and accounts. whence books are taken to lend to patients, detail by Paccinotti. More to our purpose is it to point library, and here the tile pavement of the floor is worn out, and out how the service vouchsafed by early Christianity to sand and dirt have filled the crevices. In the morning Medicine was reciprocated by that of the later Medi- crowds of people come together in this most insanitary cine to Christianity, and how both institutions—the room, and wait to see the physician. During the rest of Medical and the Christian—have reacted upon each the day any sick person brought to the hospital is deposited room and left there on a stretcher till all the For the second time in its history in this otlier for good. formalities have been accomplished and a bed allotted to the healing art broke away from its religious connexion, the patient in one of the wards. Thus this room is connow become unnecessary; and having regained the sound stantly invaded by the suffering sick poor, and though traditions of Hippocrates, it pursued its independent career, infectious cases are not admitted into the hospital, still not antagonistic to Christianity, but as a humanitarian they sometimes are brought here by mistake or through force in alliance with it. The Church, by the admission of ignorance of the true natare of the malady, and have to remain in this most unsuitable room till they can be sent to its best apologists, had before the Renaissance become a hospital where there are infectious fever wards. We need corrupb and (unable to continue in its degenerate course) hardly point out that a room where crowds of sick people had to take a fresh departure. By this time Medicine, with come and wait every day should be kept scrupulously the apparatus of the hospital system in full working order, clean, should be well lit and ventilated, and there should be no corners, ledges, cracks, or crevices where dust and was rapidly putting to flight the superstitions, the belief in may accumulate. charms, and the spiritual exorcism which the Church, germs Close by there is another room for the surgical patients. thanks to it, was outgrowing in turn. Each having dis- Down the centre of the ceiling of this room there is a huge encumbered itself of an outworn superfoetation, they join rafter borne up by a wooden pillar, which is not even again, on a higher plane, to continue with combined painted, so that the pores of the wood can readily absorb forces their fight for the elevation of humanity. It is this the exhalations of the patients. At angles with this large alliance that is celebrated with yearly recurring solemnity rafter there are fourteen smaller rafters. The ceiling between these rafters is deeply stained with dirt. Angles, on "Hospital Sunday," an institution which typifies all corners, and sombre recesses abound on all sides. In one that is best among the dominant forces of civilisation. corner of the room there is a bed, not for the patients, but Church and Hospital, the two can never ignore each other for the night porter, who sleeps here, near to the door, without mutual loss. If " the great physician is a great and is ready to turn out at any moment of the night to Thus the where admit cases of accidents &c. artist," seeking, while rehabilitating the individual, to scores of surgical patients arrive everywaiting-room, is also a bed. day, regenerate mankind, his most natural and helpful ally can room. The light and ventilation are most defective. All be no other than the apostle of that faith whose function it the light admitted is through one small window. Nor have is to remind him that his ideal is the " image of God." the rooms the advantage of the ventilation an open fireplace can give, but is warmed in winter by a porcelain stove, which largely contributes to vitiate the atmosphere. The furniture also is not in any way antiseptic; but there are, SANITARY DEFECTS OF THE HOSPITAL on the contrary, straw-bottomed chairs that readily accumulate and retain the dust. This part of the building is proLA PITIÉ AT PARIS. bably some centuries old, and is in every respect’absolutely unsuitable to the purpose for which it is employed. If there (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) be any truth at all in the germ theory, the attendance of so many patients in rooms so badly lit, and so full of dark FROM time to time complaints have reached us concerning corners, must be injurious and dangerous. It would be the insanitary condition of the celebrated Parisian hospital far better to erect a simple tent in the yard than to La Pitié. This institution, founded in 1613, has nevertheless allow the patients to wait under the old rafters that had a distinguished history in the records of modern progress. bear up the ceiling of the surgical receiving room. Here was established one of the earliest and best schools These offices and receiving rooms are immediately to of the main entrance to the hospital. On the for the training of hospital nurses, and many of the most the left a large amount of valuable space is occupied by the right distinguished physicians and surgeons of France, and huge and ugly church of the hospital. This church can indeed of several other countries, owe their success to seat 600 persons. Formerly people from outside the hospital the excellent clinical school of La Pitie. Yet this hos- were allowed to attend service here. Now this is no longer pital, like many other hoary institutions, is in a very ’ the custom, nor is it in any way necessary. There insanitary condition. Whatever may be taught here, are plenty of other churches in the neighbourhood where it is evident that the lessons given in hygiene are the congregations are anything but numerous. At the theoretical rather than practical. The building had Church of La Pitie Hospital we were assured that the formerly been a poor asylum, then a home for foundlings, average congregation amounted to only fifteen persons. Even and in 1809 it became an annex of the Hotel Dieu. New if it were twice or three times that number, there would wings have been at various times added to the original be no need to preserve a building capable of seating six structure, and some old portions were pulled down to give hundred persons. As it is, a great portion of the church is more yard space, and thus secure more light, air, and ven- converted into a sort of lumber-room for flower-pots, small tilation. Also the present director of the hospital is to be trees, that are wheeled in during the winter months, and warmly congratulated for having succeeded in substituting various other objects. When the other day the census syphoned-trapped and well-flushed closets for the abomina- was taken at the hospital, it was found that there were, intions which formerly infected all the wards. cluding attendants, nurses, children &o , 951 persons sleepfor in in defects on the premises. It is urged that if out of such a sanitation, seeking ing speaking, Generally it is necessary to look to the less frequented parts of a population the church fails to attract a congregation of hospital. At La Pitie it is j ust the reverse. Some of the more than a score of persons, the time has come when, in worst features of the building are those which are most the face of the present urgent need of space, a small chapel evident, and are seen by the greatest number of people. Thus should be built in its stead. There would then be ample the office at the entrance of the hospital is a wretched little space, and this conveniently situated just at the entrance chamber where three clerks are crowded together, surrounded of the hospital, for the construction of handsome and model by dusty shelves loaded with musty papers. Such portions of receiving, waiting, and consulting-rooms for medical and the wall as remain visible are dirty, and have not been white- surgical patients, offices for the administration &c. washed for the last three years. A little window opens into With regard to the wards of this hospital there is nothing one of the receiving rooms for out-patients, and from this very special to be said. They have windows on both sides, room, where persons suffering from so many different maladies therefore good light and through draughts might be estab. daily congregate together, germs may pass through the lished, if the authorities could only be pursuaded to open window to sojourn among the clerks and rest in the dust the windows facing each other. Some of the wards are of
conquest or repression-an instrument which, on the most obvious grounds of economy, it was wise to keep in as effective a condition as possible. And the slave? Simply as one among DURING the Queen’s sojourn in Klorehce, some three the many goods and cliattels connected with real propertyyears ago, iier Majesty was peculiarly interested iri the an asset to be given up in satisfaction of creditors or an heirinstitution of the Misericordia, a brotherhood, dating front loom to be bequeathed in terms of will. No wonder that 1244, devoted to the care of the sick and the transport of we hnd the houses for the accommodation and treatment the dead. Its members recognise no distinction of class of these subjects so well appointed and maintained’ that or occupation, but hold themselves in readiness to repair it was to his observation, if not practice, in them that the to the sick room or the scene of tecident, and render patrician amateur Celsus acquired that knowledge of whatever aid the special circumstances demand. As a disease and its remedies which has given him the name of product of the intimate alliance, having its roots in the tlce "It,ornan Hippocrates." The whole government and first Christian centuries, between the Church and Medi- the life that prevailed under it were in those times the cine, the Misericordia yields to none of the characteristic expression of a sublime selfishnes3, of an estimate of man’s features of Florence in interest, whether humanitarian or duty to his neighbour so perverted or abased as to count aesthetic. Frocked from head to foot in linen of the same for the central cause which incurred the collapse of the colour, the face covered all but the eyes, its little com- "Mistress of the World." The success of Christianity during the 1irst centuries panies thread the thoroughfares by night or day on their philanthropic errand, inspiring the most careless bystander becomes in great part intelligible when its essential with reflections, never inopportune, on the precariousness antagonism to the Pagan dominion is considered. Rome of life and the certainty of death, on the equality shared in represented the apotheosis of Self, in its most egotistic, both respects by mankind and typified in the passing most inhuman aspect. The new power which was to company itself, which includes the prince and the artisan, displace and submerge it had its watchword in the the genius and the mediocrity, undistinguishable in the counter motive of love to one’s neighbour. Humanity, which had long groaned under the former, now sawuniform of the Misericordia. For six centuries this miniature army peculiar to Tuscany through a higher instinct of self-preservation—the deliver. has been on the march, keeping time to " the still, sad ance that awaited it from the latter. In no respect was music of humanity" ; but it is not difficult to trace the contrast more appreciable or more striking than in the its genesis to an epoch far anterior. Organisations, treatment vouchsafed under the new system to the slave, indeed, for the relief of the sick or the disposal of the dead the poor, and the sick. The casual, occasional short. are almost contemporaneous with the healing art-coeval, lived gleams of philanthropy to which the Pagan world was that is to say, with humanity itself. Medicine is an out- not quite extraneous were now caught up, absorbed, and come of the self-preserving instinct, manifested, as Celsus concentrated in the diffused glow of the new religion; has told us, in the most savage tribes, and even, as isolated kindness became organised benevolence; the love Lucretius has finely imagined, in prehistoria man, seek- that announced itself in compassion and relief, from being ing in rudest fashion to repair the wounds received in con- a mark of the individual, was now a master power flict with wild beasts. Side by side with this primitive of the community. All the scattered impulses that attempt at cure developed the endeavour after pre- made for good had taken collective form and expression in vention-the solicitude to appease the offended deity Christianity. The Christian preacher dwelt on the duty whose anger took the form of corporeal or mental owed by the strong to the weak; on the blessedness of visitation. Hence the priesthood, the ministers of the ’, giving more than of receiving; he urged the sanctity of disUnseen, became the mediators between the afflicted tress-" res sacra miserice"-and the ineffably " sweet sense creature and the offended Creator, and, as at the same of providing," till under his doctrine the rich denuded time the sole depositories of such knowledge as was then themselves of their wealth to succour the poor, and patri. possible, they were the dispensers of relief, whether in the cian-statesman and even Empress became humble minisguise of natural remedies or of manual interference. With trants to the wounded or the plague-stricken. The the advent of the Greek medicine under Hippocrates the hospitals the Valetudinaria, the , the power of the priest-physician, already on the wane, passed already existing-were converted into Christian instituaway, to give place to the study of nature and her law?, tions, and took in the whole community; while the under which disease, as well as health, was seen to occur. Fathers of the Church, who, as Puccinotti has proved, The instinct of self-preservation expanded from the indi- preserved the scientific traditions of Greece and Rome, vidual to the community, and State medicine reached its applied these with the skill of cultured intellects, in. culmination in antiquity under Imperial Rome, whose spired by benevolent impulse, to the cure of their inmates. sanitary legislation, including drainage, water-supply, If we were asked to name an early hospital in the Christian the universal diffusion of public baths, and the planting of as contra-distinguished from the Pagan sense, we should waste or marsh lands, is still in some respects a rebuke to point to that opened in Ceesarea by St. Basil in the fourth The practice of medicine was century, where the Saint himself and his brother monks our modern civilisation. itself severely regulated in Rome, and the Lex Cornelia, in not only tended, but treated the sick with the best knowsatisfaction for the errors of the practitioner, was followed ledge the times could command. Not only so, but lay by more stringent enactment, till the whole rights of the brethren were employed to supplement the work for which patient, mental or corporeal, were elaborately safeguarded the rapidly extencting wards became undermanned, and under Justinian. physicians and non-professional helpers like those of the But all this practice and legislation was in obedience to Tuscan Misericordia bore a hand, carrying the sick or the lower self-preserving instinct, and to that alone. Hos- injured from town and country, often on their shoulders, pitals there were under the Pagan system, but it is not diffi. to the hospital. Many are the epistles from St. Basil to culb to trace their inspiration and genesis. Taking Imperial Eustachius Medicus (son of Oribasius, physician to Julian Rome as the highest development of that system, we the Apostate) in which the Greek medicine receives its find her Valetttdinaria in full and well-diffused activity— due meed of praise, and in which the transition of the hospitals, that is to say, for the care and cure of the soldier, Greco-Latin therapeutics to the medicina monastica-the and even, on patrician estates, for treatment of the slave. But lineal parent at Salerno and other schools of the modern how was the soldier regarded? Merely as an instrument of. practice-is clearly set forth. CHURCH AND HOSPITAL.
--
1331 We need not go down the noble list of such Christian and dirt on the rafters and amid the books, papers, reports, In the out-patient receiving room there is a hospitals as St. Basil’s, given with surpassing interest of and accounts. whence books are taken to lend to patients, detail by Paccinotti. More to our purpose is it to point library, and here the tile pavement of the floor is worn out, and out how the service vouchsafed by early Christianity to sand and dirt have filled the crevices. In the morning Medicine was reciprocated by that of the later Medi- crowds of people come together in this most insanitary cine to Christianity, and how both institutions—the room, and wait to see the physician. During the rest of Medical and the Christian—have reacted upon each the day any sick person brought to the hospital is deposited room and left there on a stretcher till all the For the second time in its history in this otlier for good. formalities have been accomplished and a bed allotted to the healing art broke away from its religious connexion, the patient in one of the wards. Thus this room is connow become unnecessary; and having regained the sound stantly invaded by the suffering sick poor, and though traditions of Hippocrates, it pursued its independent career, infectious cases are not admitted into the hospital, still not antagonistic to Christianity, but as a humanitarian they sometimes are brought here by mistake or through force in alliance with it. The Church, by the admission of ignorance of the true natare of the malady, and have to remain in this most unsuitable room till they can be sent to its best apologists, had before the Renaissance become a hospital where there are infectious fever wards. We need corrupb and (unable to continue in its degenerate course) hardly point out that a room where crowds of sick people had to take a fresh departure. By this time Medicine, with come and wait every day should be kept scrupulously the apparatus of the hospital system in full working order, clean, should be well lit and ventilated, and there should be no corners, ledges, cracks, or crevices where dust and was rapidly putting to flight the superstitions, the belief in may accumulate. charms, and the spiritual exorcism which the Church, germs Close by there is another room for the surgical patients. thanks to it, was outgrowing in turn. Each having dis- Down the centre of the ceiling of this room there is a huge encumbered itself of an outworn superfoetation, they join rafter borne up by a wooden pillar, which is not even again, on a higher plane, to continue with combined painted, so that the pores of the wood can readily absorb forces their fight for the elevation of humanity. It is this the exhalations of the patients. At angles with this large alliance that is celebrated with yearly recurring solemnity rafter there are fourteen smaller rafters. The ceiling between these rafters is deeply stained with dirt. Angles, on "Hospital Sunday," an institution which typifies all corners, and sombre recesses abound on all sides. In one that is best among the dominant forces of civilisation. corner of the room there is a bed, not for the patients, but Church and Hospital, the two can never ignore each other for the night porter, who sleeps here, near to the door, without mutual loss. If " the great physician is a great and is ready to turn out at any moment of the night to Thus the where admit cases of accidents &c. artist," seeking, while rehabilitating the individual, to scores of surgical patients arrive everywaiting-room, is also a bed. day, regenerate mankind, his most natural and helpful ally can room. The light and ventilation are most defective. All be no other than the apostle of that faith whose function it the light admitted is through one small window. Nor have is to remind him that his ideal is the " image of God." the rooms the advantage of the ventilation an open fireplace can give, but is warmed in winter by a porcelain stove, which largely contributes to vitiate the atmosphere. The furniture also is not in any way antiseptic; but there are, SANITARY DEFECTS OF THE HOSPITAL on the contrary, straw-bottomed chairs that readily accumulate and retain the dust. This part of the building is proLA PITIÉ AT PARIS. bably some centuries old, and is in every respect’absolutely unsuitable to the purpose for which it is employed. If there (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) be any truth at all in the germ theory, the attendance of so many patients in rooms so badly lit, and so full of dark FROM time to time complaints have reached us concerning corners, must be injurious and dangerous. It would be the insanitary condition of the celebrated Parisian hospital far better to erect a simple tent in the yard than to La Pitié. This institution, founded in 1613, has nevertheless allow the patients to wait under the old rafters that had a distinguished history in the records of modern progress. bear up the ceiling of the surgical receiving room. Here was established one of the earliest and best schools These offices and receiving rooms are immediately to of the main entrance to the hospital. On the for the training of hospital nurses, and many of the most the left a large amount of valuable space is occupied by the right distinguished physicians and surgeons of France, and huge and ugly church of the hospital. This church can indeed of several other countries, owe their success to seat 600 persons. Formerly people from outside the hospital the excellent clinical school of La Pitie. Yet this hos- were allowed to attend service here. Now this is no longer pital, like many other hoary institutions, is in a very ’ the custom, nor is it in any way necessary. There insanitary condition. Whatever may be taught here, are plenty of other churches in the neighbourhood where it is evident that the lessons given in hygiene are the congregations are anything but numerous. At the theoretical rather than practical. The building had Church of La Pitie Hospital we were assured that the formerly been a poor asylum, then a home for foundlings, average congregation amounted to only fifteen persons. Even and in 1809 it became an annex of the Hotel Dieu. New if it were twice or three times that number, there would wings have been at various times added to the original be no need to preserve a building capable of seating six structure, and some old portions were pulled down to give hundred persons. As it is, a great portion of the church is more yard space, and thus secure more light, air, and ven- converted into a sort of lumber-room for flower-pots, small tilation. Also the present director of the hospital is to be trees, that are wheeled in during the winter months, and warmly congratulated for having succeeded in substituting various other objects. When the other day the census syphoned-trapped and well-flushed closets for the abomina- was taken at the hospital, it was found that there were, intions which formerly infected all the wards. cluding attendants, nurses, children &o , 951 persons sleepfor in in defects on the premises. It is urged that if out of such a sanitation, seeking ing speaking, Generally it is necessary to look to the less frequented parts of a population the church fails to attract a congregation of hospital. At La Pitie it is j ust the reverse. Some of the more than a score of persons, the time has come when, in worst features of the building are those which are most the face of the present urgent need of space, a small chapel evident, and are seen by the greatest number of people. Thus should be built in its stead. There would then be ample the office at the entrance of the hospital is a wretched little space, and this conveniently situated just at the entrance chamber where three clerks are crowded together, surrounded of the hospital, for the construction of handsome and model by dusty shelves loaded with musty papers. Such portions of receiving, waiting, and consulting-rooms for medical and the wall as remain visible are dirty, and have not been white- surgical patients, offices for the administration &c. washed for the last three years. A little window opens into With regard to the wards of this hospital there is nothing one of the receiving rooms for out-patients, and from this very special to be said. They have windows on both sides, room, where persons suffering from so many different maladies therefore good light and through draughts might be estab. daily congregate together, germs may pass through the lished, if the authorities could only be pursuaded to open window to sojourn among the clerks and rest in the dust the windows facing each other. Some of the wards are of