THE HOSPITAL.
It will be remembered that Fleur-de-Marie, saved by La Louve, had been
conveyed to the country house of Dr. Griffon, [Footnote: The name which I
have the honor to bear, which my father, grandfather, grand-uncle, and
great grandfather--one of the most learned men of the seventeenth
century--have rendered celebrated by works on theoretical and practical
medicine, would forbid me from any attack, or hasty reflection, concerning
physicians; even though the gravity of the subject upon which I treat, and
the just and deserved celebrity of the French Medical School, did not
prevent me. In Dr. Griffon I have only wished to personify one, otherwise
respectable, who allows himself to be carried away the ardor of art, and
led to make experiments which are a serious abuse medical power (if I may
express myself in this manner), forgetting that there is something more
sacred than Science--Humanity.] not far from Ravageurs' Island. The worthy
doctor, one of the physicians of the City Hospital where we shall conduct
our readers, who had obtained this situation through a powerful interest,
regarded his ward as a sort of place where he experimented on the poor the
treatment which he applied afterward to his rich patients, never hazarding
on the last any new cures before having first tried and retried the
application _in anima vili_, as he said, with that kind of passionless
barbarity which a blind love for science produces. Thus, if the doctor
wished to convince himself of the comparative effect of some new and
hazardous treatment, in order to be able to deduce consequences favorable
to such or such system, he took a certain number of patients, treated some
according to the new system, others by the ancient method. Under some
circumstances, be abandoned others to the care of nature. After which he
counted the survivors. These terrible experiments were, truly, a human
sacrifice on the altar of science. Dr. Griffon did not seem to think of
this. In the eyes of this prince of science (as they phrase it) the
patients of his hospital were only subjects for study and experiment; and
as, after all, there resulted sometimes from these essays _in anima
vili_ a fact or discovery useful to science, the doctor showed himself
as entirely satisfied and triumphant as a general after a victory
sufficiently costly in soldiers.
Homeopathy had never a more violent adversary than Dr. Griffon. He look
upon this method as absurd and homicidal; thus, strong in his convictions,
and wishing, as he said, to drive the homeopathists to the wall, he offered
to abandon to their care a certain number of patients, on whom they might
experiment to their liking. But he affirmed in advance, sure of not being
contradicted by the result, that, out of twenty patients submitted to this
treatment, not over five, at the outside would survive. The homeopathists
gave the go-by to this proposition, to the great chagrin of the doctor, who
regretted the loss of this occasion to prove, by figures, the vanity of
homeopathic practice. Dr. Griffon would have been stupefied if any one had
said to him, in reference to this free and autocratic disposition of his
subjects:
"Such a state of things would cause the barbarism of those days to be
regretted when condemned criminals were exposed to undergo newly-discovered
surgical operations; operations which they dared not practice on the
uncondemned. If it were successful, the condemned was pardoned. Compared
to what you do, sir, this barbarity was charity. After all, a chance for
life was thus given to a poor creature for whom the executioner was
waiting, and an experiment was rendered possible which might be useful
to all. But to try your hazardous medicaments on unfortunate artisans,
for whom the hospital is the sole refuge when sickness overtakes them;
to try a treatment, perhaps fatal, on people whom poverty confides to
you, trusting and powerless; to you, their only hope; to you, who will
only answer for their life to God--do you know that this is to push the
love of science to inhumanity, sir? How! the poorer classes already
people the workshops, the field, the army; in this world they only know
misery and privations; and when, at the end of their sufferings and
fatigues, they fall exhausted--half-dead--sickness even does not preserve
them from a last and sacrilegious "experiment!" I ask your heart, sir,
would not this be unjust and cruel?"
Alas! Dr. Griffon would have been touched, perhaps, by these severe words,
but not convinced. Man is made the creature of circumstances. The captain
thus accustoms himself to consider his soldiers as nothing more than the
pawns of the bloody game called battle. And it is because man is thus made,
that society ought to protect those whom fate exposes to the action of
these "humane necessities." Now the character of Dr. Griffon once admitted
(and it can be admitted without much hyperbole), the inmates of this
hospital had then no guarantee, no recourse against the scientific
barbarity of his experiments; for there exists a grievous hiatus in the
organization of the civil hospitals. We will point it out here, so that we
may be understood. Military hospitals are each day visited by a superior
officer charged to receive the complaints of the sick soldiers, and to
attend to them if they appear reasonable. This oversight completely
distinct from the government of the hospital, is excellent--it has always
produced the best results. It is, besides, impossible to see establishments
better kept than the military hospitals; the soldiers are nursed with much
care, and treated, we would say, almost with respectful commiseration. Why
not have a similar superintendence established in the civil hospitals, by
men completely independent of the government and medical faculty? The
complaints of the poor (if they were well founded) would thus have an
impartial organ, while at present this organ is absolutely wanting. Thus
the doors of the hospital of Dr. Griffon once shut on a patient, he
belonged body and soul to science. No friendly or disinterested ear can
hear his grief. He is told plainly that, being admitted out of charity, he
becomes henceforth a part of the experimental domain of the doctor, and
that patient and malady must serve as subjects of study and observation,
analysis, or instruction, to the young students who accompany assiduously
the visits of M. Griffon. In effect, the subject soon had to answer to
interrogations often the most painful, the most sorrowful; and that, not to
the doctor alone, who like the priest, fulfills a duty, and has the right
to know everything--no, he must reply in a loud voice before a curious and
greedy crowd of students. Yes, in this pandemonium of science, old or
young, maid or wife, were obliged to abjure every feeling or sentiment of
shame, and to make the most confidential communications, submit to the most
material investigations, before a numerous public; and almost always these
cruel formalities aggravated their disease. And this is neither humane nor
just; it is because the poor enter the hospital in the holy name of
charity, that they should be treated with compassion and with respect, for
misfortune has its dignity.
On reading the following lines, it will be perceived why we have caused
them to be preceded by these reflections. Nothing could be more sad than
the nocturnal aspect of the vast ward of the hospital, where we will
introduce our readers. Along the whole length of its gloomy walls were
ranged two parallel rows of beds, vaguely lighted by the sepulchral
glimmering of a lamp suspended from the ceiling; the narrow windows were
barred with iron, like a prison's. The atmosphere is so sickening, so
filled with disease, that the new patients did not often become acclimated
without danger: this increase of suffering is a kind of premium which every
new-comer inevitably pays for a hospital residence. The air of this immense
hall is, then, heavy and corrupted. At intervals, the silence of night is
interrupted, now by plaintive moans, now by profound sighs, uttered by the
feverish sleepers; then all is quiet, and naught is heard but the regular
and monotonous tickings of a large clock, which strikes the hours, so long
for sleepless suffering. One of the extremities of this hall was almost
plunged into obscurity. Suddenly was heard a great stir, and the noise of
rapid footsteps; a door was opened and shut several times; a sister of
charity, whose large white cap and black dress were visible from the light
which she carried in her hand, approached one of the last beds on the right
side of the hall. Some of the patients, awaking with a start, sat up in
bed, attentive to what was passing. Soon the folding doors were opened. A
priest entered, bearing a crucifix--the two sisters knelt. By the pale
light which shone like a glory around this bed, while the other parts of
the hall remained in obscurity, the almoner of the hospital was seen
leaning over this couch of misery, pronouncing some words, the slow sounds
of which were lost in the silence of night. At the end of a quarter of an
hour the priest took a sheet, which he threw over the bed.
Then he retired. One of the kneeling sisters arose, closed the curtains,
and returned to her prayers alongside of her companion. Then everything
became once more silent. One of the patients had just died. Among the women
who did not sleep, and who had witnessed this mute scene, were three
persons whose names have already been mentioned in the course of this
history: Mademoiselle de Fermont, daughter of the unhappy widow ruined by
the cupidity of Jacques Ferrand; La Lorraine, a poor washer-woman, to whom
Fleur-de-Marie had formerly given what money she had left; and Jeanne
Duport, sister of Pique-Vinaigre, the patterer of La Force. We know
Mademoiselle de Fermont and the juggler's sister. La Lorraine was a woman
of about twenty, with a sweet face, but extremely pale and thin: she was in
the last stage of consumption; there was no hope of saving her; she knew
it, and was wasting away slowly. The distance was not so great between the
beds of these two women but they could speak in a low tone, and not be
overheard by the sisters.
"There is another one gone," whispered La Lorraine, thinking of the dead,
and speaking to herself. "She will not suffer more--she is very happy."
"She is very happy, if she has left no children," added Jeanne.
"Oh! you are not asleep, neighbor," said La Lorraine, to her. "How do you
get on, for your first night here? Last night, as soon as you were brought
in, you were placed in bed, and I did not dare to speak to you; I heard you
sob.
"Oh! yes; I have wept much."
"You are, then, in much pain?"
"Yes, but I am used to pain; it is from sorrow I weep. At length I fell
asleep; I was still sleeping when the noise of the doors awoke me. When the
priest came in, and the good sisters knelt, I soon saw it was a woman who
was dying; then I said to myself a pater and an ave for her."
"I also; and, as I have the same complaint, as this woman had, who is just
dead, I could not prevent myself from saying, 'Here is another whose
sufferings are ended; she is very happy!'"
"Yes, as I told you, if she had no children."
"You have children, then?"
"Three," said the sister of Pique-Vinaigre, with a sigh,
"And you?"
"I had a little girl, but I did not keep her long. I am a washer-woman at
the boats; I worked as long as I could. But everything has an end; when my
strength failed me, my bread failed me also. They turned me oat of my
lodgings; I do not know what would have become of me, except for a poor
woman who gave me shelter in a cellar, where she had concealed herself to
escape from her husband, who wished to kill her. There I was confined on
the straw; but, happily, this good woman knew a young girl, beautiful and
charitable as an angel from heaven: this young girl had a little money; she
took me from the cellar, and placed me in a furnished room, paying the rent
in advance, giving me, besides, a willow cradle for my child, and forty
francs for myself, with some clothes."
"Good little girl! I also have met, by chance, with one who may be called
her equal, a young dressmaker, very obliging. I had gone to see my poor
brother, who is a prisoner," said Jeanne, after a moment of hesitation;
"and I met in the visitors' room this young girl of whom I speak; having
heard me say to my brother that I was not happy, she came to me, much
embarrassed, to offer what services were in her power."
"How kind that was in her!"
"I accepted; she gave me her address, and, two days after, this dear little
Rigolette--that's her dear name--gave me employment."
"Rigolette!" cried La Lorraine.
"You know her?"
"No; but the young girl who was so generous to me, several times mentioned
the name of Rigolette: they were friends together."
"Well!" said Jeanne, smiling sadly, "since we are neighbors in sickness, we
should be friends like our two benefactresses."
"Willingly: my name is Annette Gerbier, otherwise La Lorraine,
washer-woman."
"And mine, Jeanne Duport, fringe-maker. Ah! it is so good, at the hospital,
to find some one who is not altogether a stranger, above all, when you come
for the first time, and you have many troubles! But I do not wish to think
of this. Tell me, La Lorraine, what was the name of the young girl who has
been so kind to you?"
"She was called La Goualeuse. All my sorrow is that I have not seen her for
a long time. She was as beautiful as the Holy Virgin, with fine flaxen hair
and blue eyes, so sweet--so sweet! Unfortunately, notwithstanding her
assistance, my poor child died at two months," and Lorraine wiped away a
tear.
"Poor Lorraine!"
"I regret, my child, for myself, not for her, poor little dear! She would
have too much to struggle with, for she soon would have been an orphan. I
have not a long time to live."
"You should not have such ideas at your age. Have you been sick for a long
time?"
"It will soon be three months. Bless me! when I had to work for myself and
my child, I increased my labor; the winter was cold, I caught a cold on my
chest; at this time I lost my little girl. In watching her I forgot myself.
To that add sorrow, and I am what you see me, consumptive, doomed--as was
the actress who has just died."
"At your age there is always hope."
"The actress was only two years older, and you see---"
"She whom the good sisters are watching now, was she an actress?"
"Oh, yes--what a fate! She had been beautiful as the day. She had plenty of
money, equipages, diamonds, but, unfortunately, the small-pox disfigured
her; then want came, then poverty--behold her dead in the hospital. Yet,
she was not proud; on the contrary, she was kind and gentle to everybody;
she told us that she had written to a gentleman whom she had known in her
prosperity, who had loved her; she wrote to him to come and reclaim her
body, because it hurt her feelings to think she would be dissected--cut in
pieces."
"And this gentleman has come?"
"No."
"Oh! that is very cruel."
"At each moment the poor woman asked for him, saying continually, 'Oh! he
will come! oh! he will surely come;' and yet she died, and he had not
come."
"Her end must have been so much the more painful."
"Oh, Lord, yes; for she dreaded so much what they would do to her body."
"After having been rich and happy, to die here is sad! For us, it is only a
change of misery."