Alas, the book's most fundamental defect lies precisely in the realm of the specific. His father's four siblings included three Carmelites and a knight of Malta. We know that the changes in Louis XIV's Council of State between the 1680s and mid 1690s led the king to change his views about treatment of some of the poor, such as prostitutes. Providing information about the actual royal councilors involved in the initiatives he examines would have greatly strengthened Hickey's arguments. More details about local matters would also have improved the text in a few cases.
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.