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 



