Would any one go so far as to assert that the sick condemned to seek refuge in the hospitals, having their sensibilities blunted by labour, by misery, by their daily sufferings, would but faintly feel the effects of the horrible arrangements that the old Hotel 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 Charite:  the mortality there is also nearly double!...  All the trepanned die in that hospital; whilst this operation is tolerably successful in Paris, and still more so at Versailles.”

The maladies continue double the time!  The mortality there is double!  All those who are trepanned die!  The lying-in women die in a frightful proportion, &c.  These are the sinister words that strike the eye periodically in the statements of the Hotel Dieu; and yet, let us repeat it, years passed away, and nothing was altered in the organization of the great hospital!  Why persist in remaining in a condition that so openly wounds humanity?  Must we, together with Cabanis, who also abused the old Hotel Dieu severely, “must we exclaim, that abuses known by all the world, against which every voice is raised, have secret supporters who know how to defend them, in a manner to tire out well-meaning people?  Must we speak of false characters, perverse hearts, that seemed to regard errors and abuses as their patrimony?” Let us dare to acknowledge it, Gentlemen, evil is generally perpetrated in a less wicked manner:  it is done without the intervention of any strong passion; by vulgar, yet all-powerful routine, and ignorance.  I observe the same thought, though couched in the calm and cleverly circumspect language of Bailly:  “The Hotel Dieu has existed perhaps since the seventh century, and if this hospital is the most imperfect of all, it is because it is the oldest.  From the earliest date of this establishment, good has been sought, the desire has been to adhere to it, and constancy has appeared a duty.  From this cause, all useful novelties have with difficulty found admission; any reform is difficult; there is a numerous administration to convince; there is an immense mass to move.”

The immensity of the mass, however, did not discourage the old Commissioners of the Academy.  Let this conduct serve as an example to learned men, to administrators, who might be called upon to cast an investigating eye on the whole of our beneficent and humane establishments.  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 impossible for them to have sprung up afresh in the course of half a century, and that in proportion to their multiplicity, 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 finishing this long analysis:  “Each poor man is now laid alone in a bed, and he owes it principally to the gifted, persevering, and courageous efforts of the Academy of Sciences.  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!