Tle a eo), ee 
REPORT ON THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES. 165 
_ The immensity of the mass, however, did not discour- 
age the old Commissioners of the Academy. Let this 
conduct serve as an example to learned men, to adminis- 
trators, who might be called upon to cast an investigating 
eye on the whole of our beneficent and humane estab- 
lishments. Undoubtedly, the abuses, if any yet exist, 
have not individually any thing to be compared to those 
to which Bailly’s report did justice ; but would it be im- 
possible for them to have sprung up afresh in the course 
of half a century, and that in proportion to their multi- 
plicity, they should still make enormous and deplorable 
breaches in the patrimony of the poor ? 
I shall modify very slightly, Gentlemen, the concluding 
words of our illustrious colleague’s report, and I shall not 
in the least alter their innate meaning, if I say, in finish- 
ing this long analysis: “ Each poor man is now laid alone 
in a bed, and he owes it principally to the gifted, perse- 
vering, and courageous efforts of the Academy of Sci- 
ences. The poor man ought to know it, and the poor 
man will not forget it.” Happy, Gentlemen, happy the 
academy that can adorn itself with such reminiscences ! 
REPORT ON THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES. 
An attentive glance at the past has been, in all ages 
and in all countries, the infallible means of rightly appre- 
ciating the present. When we direct this glance to the 
sanitary state of Paris, the name of Bailly will again 
present itself in the first line amongst the promoters of a 
capital amelioration, which I shall point out in a few 
words. . 
Notwithstanding the numerous aéts of parliament,— 
notwithstanding the positive police regulations, which 
~ dated back to Charles IX., to Henry III., to Henry IV., 
