A great deal has been said in these latter times of those immense edifices pompously called "Model Hospitals." There is Lariboisière, for instance, and the new Hôtel Dieu. It would have been wiser had the government spent less in one instance, and been more lavish in another; for, while these magnificent buildings were being erected, palaces were also in course of construction all over the capital, and the laboring classes, thus driven from their workshops, were compelled to seek lodgings up in attics or in out-of-the-way localities. If some trouble had been taken to cleanse and widen the poor man's tenement, or had something been done towards putting him in the way of getting food at little cost, we should boast fewer façades, fewer sumptuous edifices, but the work would be more meritorious.
Physicians have energetically opposed the idea of accumulating so large a number of patients in the Hôtel Dieu as it was originally intended it should contain. Let us trust the observations of experienced men will be taken into consideration, and that the number of beds will be diminished before final arrangements are completed.
Our beds are too close; and another thing which strikes a foreigner on visiting our hospitals is that the divisions which are supposed to seclude one patient from his neighbor, are perfectly useless for that purpose. In many cases, they are done away with altogether. The proximity of beds varies, however, according to the different asylums. Some of the buildings were not intended for hospitals, and their managers have had to turn rooms into wards in the best way they could, in spite of defective architecture. It is difficult to specify the exact distance kept between the beds; but an idea can be conveyed when I state that any patient, by stretching his arm out, without any great exertion could easily touch his neighbor's hand.
In many hospitals, the beds have been coupled by two and two, so that, if two patients are thus closer to each other on one side, the distance is larger from other patients on the opposite side.
There is, however, always space enough left for a night-table between every two beds. In most hospitals, beds are hung round with white calico curtains; but in some asylums they are omitted, and in these there is literally nothing to hide patients from view. Such a system of total exposure is perfectly inhuman. I should say it originates in a spirit of _medical socialism_; for it compels sufferers to exhibit their wounds to each other during the doctor's visit. Some men and all women cannot endure this ordeal without a struggle. Why not sympathize with that which can be alleviated, if not entirely cured? What would be our feelings if, when brought low by fever and diet, we had to lie near a man who is breathing his last, and to remain in full view of his corpse for long hours after he had expired? But, as before said, the larger number of hospital beds are hung round with curtains, maintained in opposition to our Paris doctors, who have repeatedly protested against them, insisting that all hangings draw unwholesome miasms, and are therefore receptacles of contagion. This objection is not unfounded; eminent practitioners experience great uneasiness on the subject, and the curtain difficulty has often been debated by managers of sanitary institutions.
