ation?

To the professors of the art? No, no, Gentlemen! By an inconceivable
anomaly the physicians, the surgeons, never obtained more than a
secondary, a subordinate influence over the administration of the
hospitals. No, no, the sentiments of the medical body for the poor could
not be doubted, at an epoch and in a country where Dr. Anthony Petit
thus answered the irritated queen, Marie Antoinette: "Madam, if I came
not yesterday to Versailles, it was because I was attending the lying-in
of a peasant, who was in the greatest danger. Your Majesty errs,
however, in supposing that I neglect the Dauphin for the poor; I have
hitherto treated the young child with as much attention and care as if
he had been the son of one of your grooms."

Preference was granted to the most suffering, to those in most danger,
disregarding rank and fortune; such was, you see, Gentlemen, the sublime
rule of the French Medical Corps; and such is still its gospel. I want
no other proof of it than those admirable words addressed by our fellow
labourer Larrey, to his friend Tanchou, when wounded at the Battle of
Montmirail: "Your wound is slight, sir; we have only room and straw in
this ambulance for serious wounds. They will take you into that stable."

The medical corps could not, therefore, with any reason be accused or
suspected in regard to the old Hotel Dieu of Paris.

If economy be invoked, I find an answer quite a-propos in Bailly: the
daily allowance for the patients at the Hotel Dieu was notably higher
than in other establishments in the capital more charitably organized.

Would any one go so far as to assert that the sick condemned to seek
refuge in the hospitals, having their sensibilities blunted by labour,
by misery, by their daily sufferings, would but faintly feel the effects
of the horrible arrangements that the old Hotel Dieu revealed to all
clear-sighted people? I will quote from the report of our colleague;
"The maladies continue nearly double the time at the Hotel Dieu,
compared with those at the Charite: the mortality there is also nearly
double!... All the trepanned die in that hospital; whilst this
operation is tolerably successful in Paris, and still more so at
Versailles."

The maladies continue double the time! The mortality there is double!
All those who are trepanned die! The lying-in women die in a frightful
proportion, &c. These are the sinister words that strike the eye
periodically in the statements of the Ho