REPORT ON THE HOSPITALS. 161 
proaches of death nailed these unfortunate people to 
their place, did they not energetically curse that help, 
which in such a situation could only prolong their pain- 
ful agony. 
But it was not only that beds thus placed were a 
source of discomfort, of disgust; that they prevented 
rest and sleep; that an insupportable heat occasioned 
and propagated diseases of the skin and frightful vermin ; 
that the fever patient bedewed his neighbours with his 
profuse perspirations; and that in the critical moment 
he might be chilled by contact with those whose hot fit 
would occur later, &c. Still more serious effects re- 
sulted from the presence of many sick in the same bed ; 
the food, the medicines, intended for one person, often 
found their way to another. In short, Gentlemen, in 
those beds of multiple population, the dead often lay for 
hours, and sometimes whole nights, intermingled with the 
living. The principal charitable establishment in Paris 
thus offered those dreadful coincidences, that the poets 
of Rome, that ancient historians have represented under 
King Mezentius, as the utmost extreme of barbarism. 
Such was, Gentlemen, the normal state of the old 
Hotel Dieu. One word, one word only, will suffice to 
tell what was the exceptional state: they placed some 
patients on the tops or testers of those same beds, where 
we have found so much suffering, so many authorized 
maledictions. 
Now, Gentlemen, let us, together with our fellow acad- 
emician, cast a glance on the ward of surgical opera- 
tions. 
This ward was full of patients. The operations were 
performed in their presence. Bailly says, “We see 
there the preparations for the torment; there are heard 
