Hickey provides extremely important evidence about the directors' use of hospital resources. Hickey implicitly suggests that the central government acted in an effective way in abolishing so many local hospitals. The smallest, poorest hospitals did not survive, so the government acted effectively in that way. Conversely, this success guaranteed the failure of the government's perennial hopes to gain resources from the process, because the only institutions it could get rid of were precisely those with no resources to confiscate. This book will provide extremely helpful information to the many young scholars now working on rural hospitals.
Hickey also demonstrates the profound difference between treating the sick and treating the poor.
One wishes for more detail on this matter. Hickey's last page offers a tantalizing glimpse at an important new avenue of historical research. Perhaps we can soon expect to see an Histoire hospitali re de la France . If so, its authors will surely take advantage of the wealth of information offered by Daniel Hickey.