LA SALPÊTRIÈRE. HÔTEL DIEU. HÔPITAL DE JESUS,
DE LA CHARITÉ, DE LA PITIÉ.
THE FOUNDLING SOCIETY
[Sidenote: HOSPITALS]
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.
[Sidenote: OLD FOUNDLING HOSPITAL]
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.
[Sidenote: “MATERNITÉ” CHARITY]
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.
[Sidenote: SISTERS OF CHARITY REQUIRED]
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.”