REPORT ON THE HOSPITALS. 163 
queen, Marie Antoinette: “Madam, if I came not yes- 
terday 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 rea- 
son be accused or suspected in regard to the old Hotel 
Dieu of Paris. 
If economy be invoked, I find an answer quite a-pro- 
pos in Bailly: the daily allowance for the patients at the 
H6tel Dieu was notably higher than in other establish- 
ments in the eapital more charitably organized. 
Would any one go so far as to assert that the sick con- 
demned to seek refuge in the hospitals, having their sen- 
sibilities blunted by labour, by misery, by their daily 
sufferings, would but faintly feel the effects of the horri- 
ble arrangements that the old Hétel 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 
Charité: the mortality there is also nearly double! .... 
