THE LAËNNEC HOSPITAL, RUE DE SÈVRES.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS.
The French Hospital System—The Laënnec Hospital—The Houses of Assistance—The Quinze-Vingts—Deaf and Dumb Institutions—The Abbé de l’Épée—La Charité.
THE Hôtel des Invalides suggests the hospitals of Paris in general; and to the briefest possible glance at these—inasmuch as we have already given much space to the famous Hôtel Dieu—the present chapter may be devoted.
“England” says Dr. Le Fort, “opens to the poor wretch without an asylum and without bread the doors of a workhouse; France those of a prison. To be without shelter is a misfortune in England; in France it is a crime. Unable to suppress poverty, our law will tolerate no manifestation of it. ‘Mendicity,’ as many a printed notice proclaims, is forbidden in the department of the Seine.”
Dr. Le Fort maintains that the Paris poor are treated with too little sympathy by the Legislature, and seems to think that if their wants were more readily relieved, many an indigent invalid, whose health has gradually given way beneath hunger and destitution, would not have found his way into hospital.
The Paris hospitals differ from those of London on one important point. In our metropolis all such institutions are supported by private charity, enjoying nothing, or next to nothing, in the way of state subventions. They are open either to the subscribers themselves or to those whom they choose to recommend. The hospitals of Paris, on the other hand, are practically state property, entirely independent of the control of the public. They are beneath the domination of the Prefect of the Seine and the Minister of the Interior; both represented by a director fully invested with their power. Side by side with the director exists a council of superintendence, which investigates and approves, or disapproves, the acts of that director, without being legally able to prevent them; for the whole of the[{194}] executive is in the hands of the chief official, who is alone responsible. The director, it should be added, is seldom or never a physician, but a member of the administrative body.