France in eighteen hundred and two

La Salpêtrière, before the Revolution, was a prison for females; since that event it has been converted into an ordinary prison, an infirmary, and at length a hospital. It is an immense building, extremely well situated near the river, and is now appropriated as a receptacle for girls, above 1500 of whom are maintained in it. I am sorry to say I can say little in favour of its comfort or cleanliness.

The Hôtel Dieu, changed into Hôtel de l’Humanité by the Revolutionists, is an infirmary for the sick and diseased. It will contain 4000 people.

The Hospital of Jesus is not upon so large a scale. The Hospital of Charity is appropriated exclusively for males. The Hôpital de la Pitié is somewhat similar to our parish charity schools, for the maintenance and instruction of poor boys; this hospital is under very good discipline. The Hospital of the Trinity of St. Sulpice and of the Incurable are well regulated, particularly the latter, where the utmost attention and humanity are shown to its miserable inhabitants.

The Foundling Hospital, now called that of La Maternité, overflowed with little helpless infants during those periods of the Revolution when the holy rites of marriage were treated with derision, and licensed vice was the order of the day. Consequently the number of foundlings ever since the accession of the Corsican hero still exceeds that of all Europe.

This establishment embraces two objects, provision for lying-in women and maintenance for foundlings.

I can dwell with complacency and pleasure upon the advantages of this hospital, and I am glad to be able to praise its excellent management.

It is divided into two compartments, one for the reception of pregnant women, who are received into this house during the eighth month, upon their presenting themselves for admission, and are allowed to remain until a proper time has elapsed after their delivery. The second compartment is allotted to those children who have been exposed or abandoned by their parents. Nothing can be more interesting than the spectacle of so many infants in cradles, arranged in lines. They are put into the hands of wet nurses belonging to the institution, until women out of the country can be found to take charge of them in their own homes. Each wet nurse in the institution has care of two infants, her own and a foundling.

This establishment has supplied the place of that which was in pre-Revolution days called l’Hospice des Enfants Trouvés; a charity which owes its origin to the efforts of S. François de Paul.

It is a happy idea to blend the principles of the former institution with a provision for poor lying-in women, who formerly in their hour of labour had to resort to the Hôtel Dieu and be delivered amongst the sick.

The building for these women is part of the house once occupied by the Society of the Oratorians.

It is spacious and airy and has very large galleries, leading to the respective apartments, in each of which not more than six or seven beds are prepared.

The children are accommodated in the ci-devant Abbey of Port Royal—a convent formerly occupied by nuns. During the days of proscription and massacre, this edifice was converted into a prison. The passages were blocked up, daylight shut out, and circular walls raised. The revolutionary demoniacs changed the name of Port Royal into that of Port Libre.

Whilst it was used as a Foundling Hospital, 500 infants, 200 wet nurses, belonging to the house, 200 women either expecting a child or having already laid in, and forty sick persons were indiscriminately crowded together, besides a multitude of attendants and the apothecary. The multitude of partitions impeded the circulation of the air and retained the offensive effluvia which proceeded from this multitude of children, always clothed in dirty linen. There was not one apartment of the building through which a pure draught of air passed.

It was difficult to inspect so many dark rooms detached from each other, it frequently happened that two women who had just become mothers slept in the same bed. A general cleansing and whitewashing of the place was unknown. The institution was burdened with children left upon the hands of the charity, for the country nurses having been paid with assignats or paper money and thus deprived of the full value of their wages, nurses would not now offer themselves. The great influx of children required a proportionate number of house nurses, and hence arose the impossibility of selecting them, the necessity of complying with all their demands and a great want of management.

The food and the linen, in consequence of the low ebb to which the credit of the house was sunk, were left to be provided by contractors. The nurses had no clothes found them, pregnant women could get none, and the infants were not even provided with linen which is an absolute necessity. These evils resulted from the prodigal waste of public money which during the Directorship was diverted from its proper objects to gorge the insatiate appetite and hungry rapacity of the officials of the Government. Indeed, I am in possession of unanswerable vouchers to prove that to this circumstance (i.e., public and private plunder) the present shameful and dilapidated condition of the hospitals is to be attributed. So forcible are the representations of the Consular precepts on this subject that many go so far as to boldly assert that the grants made for the support of the hospitals have been scandalously diverted from their original destination and lavished without account on less necessary purposes.

However, in 1801 the Council General of the Institution were enabled to create and carry out a most necessary series of reforms.

The first duty they had to discharge was to secure and regulate the payment of the country nurses.

Only £250 was due to these women, yet even this was paid with difficulty. This debt has now been discharged, and this has been attended with a very striking effect. The infants have been sent to nurse much sooner, and the amount of deaths has in consequence greatly diminished; so many house nurses have not been required, so those who are employed are now selected with care and kept under a regular management; persons who were of no use whatever to the Institution have been discharged. Attention has been directed to salubrity, economy and supply of clothing and linen. The small outbuildings, which were in a ruinous state, have been pulled down; the partitions which divided the wards taken away; the number of windows increased, and cleanliness introduced over the whole hospital.

Walls have been close scraped and afterwards whitewashed; rotten timbers have been repaired, and the unserviceable and antiquated window frames renewed and replaced.

The inspectors observed that a quantity of the provisions disappeared, and the people of the house were constantly complaining they had not enough. The truth being that they sold the victuals supplied to them.

To remedy this evil refectories have been established, where they all eat together. In the lying-in part of the hospital the food is now abundant, wholesome and varied. The children’s kitchen, in which milk, panade and broth are prepared, is under especial inspection. The place of apothecary has been suppressed. Plenty of linen is provided for the children. The servant girls and house nurses as well as the women patients are now well supplied with clothes.

All double bedsteads have been removed.

Each woman and each nurse has a separate bed, and the latter two cribs, one for each of the infants they suckle. The bedsteads and cribs have been repainted, and the vermin which used to infect them has disappeared.

Two next excellent regulations have been adopted which deserve notice. The women near their time were formerly suffered to be without employment, in consequence of which they fell into a languor and lowness of spirits, frequently not disassociated from bodily indisposition. Work-rooms have now been established where they are employed in sewing and embroidery under the direction of a proper person belonging to the house. The charity might convert their earnings to the benefit of the hospital, but instead it pays them for items, the intention being to encourage them to moderate work, so that when they quit the hospital they may not be distressed by the painful uncertainty of not knowing where to search for the subsistence of the morrow.

The second regulation establishes a course of midwifery for female pupils, from all the departments. There were generally four pupils under the chief midwife, whom she instructs in the practice of midwifery for three months. This has just given rise to a public school of midwifery in the Hospital of Maternity, to which are invited as many midwives as can be procured from the several Departments. The theoretical part is to be taught by M. Bandelocque, principal accoucheur, and the practical by Madame la Chapelle, principal midwife. The school will open three months hence, on August 23. France has long stood in need of such an establishment on which the lives of so many individuals depend.

All these improvements, which have so entirely changed this vitally important establishment, are to be attributed to the energy and determination of one man, whose name deserves to be remembered and revered by future generations of Frenchmen. This individual is Monsieur Camus, member of the General Council of Hospitals.

Citizen Bailly, the steward and housekeeper, has also greatly contributed towards the establishment of order and the direction and accomplishment of the several kinds of work.

I hope I have not been too prolix in these details, but it is impossible and unjust to applaud or to censure institutions without entering into very minute particulars respecting them; besides which, as the above statements have been privately but officially communicated to me, I cannot help thinking they have some public interest. With a very few exceptions the account of one hospital in Paris contains the history of every other.

By an exposure of the disgraceful decay into which one of the most important charitable establishments of old France was allowed to fall, when it came under the administration of the friends of the people, some conception can be formed as to the amount of interest the French Government during the last ten years has bestowed upon such subjects.

At this moment the very existence of all charitable institutions in France (I do not except the hospitals) depends entirely on the personal industry of the few good and virtuous men and women who adorn the commonwealth.

All the hospitals and other institutions for the protection of the poor of Paris are maintained by the Government, the private endowments having all been confiscated during the Revolution. It is, therefore, just and proper that the conduct of that Government should be fully investigated, when complaints resound from every quarter, against its inattention to the fundamental principles of the establishment.

I conclude these remarks by presenting the observations and requisitions of the present Prefect of the Department of the Seine:

“Re-establish the former Sisters of Charity, place them at the head of the hospital department, authorise them to choose others, that this useful institution may be perpetuated. Employ in sedentary labours the old men and the infirm; the produce of their work may be divided between themselves and the hospital. Provide for the necessities of the hospitals by securing on them national property equal in value to the amount of what they formerly possessed.

“This restitution will supply the place of assessments, whose produce is insufficient, in the meantime let the produce of these assessments be paid into the treasuries of the hospitals in order that they may never be diverted from their primitive destination. Establish houses of instruction for the reception of foundlings, when they have passed their infancy, and habituate them to industry.

“Repair the buildings. Provide linen. Discharge the debts of the hospitals, and confide to a single administration the direction of the succour to be afforded to the whole department, and let it be distributed in proportion to the population of the Commune.”