manifested themselves abroad. The character of those who took these children were often more than doubtful—"many of the children died, and those who survived went out to beg with their foster-parents as soon as they could walk." The problem of restoring to the country a town-bred population has, says M. Mauger, met with a "succès très relatif."
Some of the children were maintained in orphanages inside Paris, and of them we read that they were frequently "hired out to attend funerals."
The organisation of the hospitals in the pre-revolutionary period, and even later, was extremely defective. In the old Hôtel Dieu, as many as sixteen patients slept in a bed, the bed itself being an enormous wooden structure, frequently a "two-decker." All sorts of diseases were mixed together: sanitation was a minus quantity. Even in these days, however, there were some which showed signs of better things. The Hôpital de Charité, for instance, was infinitely better than the Hôtel Dieu. But, generally speaking, the conditions were indescribably bad. Treatment was in some cases disciplinary. Those whose diseases were due to their own misconduct were subjected to treatment of which "le premier soin était le supplice humiliant de flagellation." Our infirmaries and public hospitals at the present time are full of patients whose diseases are due to drink and other forms of vice, and perhaps disciplinary treatment of some kind might be desirable in such cases, though possibly not in the form of "flagellation." The grievance of the ratepayers is a serious one.
We now come to the second period—the period of the Revolution and after. The Convention formed a Comité de Mendicite which had but a brief existence. "Its ideas, its reports, were directed to a project for the organisation of national
