Evening star., 1900-11-24
Paris Does More Than ANY Other
City in the World.
CAMPAIGN AGAINST GERM TRIBES
Contrast Between Conditions To-
day and a Hundred Years Ago.
IN ODERN HOSPITALS S
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.

/
PARIS. November TO- 1900.
Paris is mother to her children looking
after them with minute attention and low
| ing, thoughtful care. Probably nowhere
else is city administration brought down to
such point of far-Seeng, wide-embracing
detail here OF all cities of the world
I Paris is the city where it is hardest to die
of hunger or of inadequate treatment in the
case of disease; hardest for one born intel
| lectually deficient to remain all his life
banned from the pleasures and consultations
of normal human activity Paris may send
over to New York and Chicago TO study
/ American fire-ightfng methods. but Ameri-
ca looks to Paris for other reforms. and
Partisan municipal notions command a
wider attention than is ever confessed In
many respects this city represents the high
water mark of municipal achievement
| Take, for example, the admirable and
minutely accurate reproductions of the
| great Paris hospitals shown at the Paris
exposition. Examining them in detail one
sees that the Paris retreats for the sick
| poor are unparalleled in their comfort,
cleanliness. practical efficiency and in their
wonderful applications of scientific discov-
cry to the curing of pain and the speedy
curing of disease. AS DR.. Metschinisof,
the illustrious savant of the Institute Pas
| teur, has pointed out, they furnish a strlk-
| ing object lesson in the advantages of liv-
ing in our days. The normal man stricken
with sickness has endless reason for being
glad that he is not his at-grandfather.
| If one wanted to know how ones great
grandfather would have been treated.
should that venerable gentleman have been
unwise enough to fall Ill, there was a re-
production of a corner of the old Hotel
Dieu of the close of the eighteenth century
| to tell the story. That corner of the show
was not comforting if one had a proper re-
| gard for ones ancestor. The sick man
| nf hnt let ant ,.1, ,-,1,
| of criminal, and if he got well as a result
of the methods of cure applied to his case
| then he was a most remarkable person.
Even to come out alive from such q den of
| horror was a proof OF a superb constitution.
a Century Ago.
! The patients We're not allowed to cumber
the ground to any great extent The city.
economical to the last degree slowed them
four in a bed AS shown in the Pavilion.
| the bed was scarcely large enough for one
person according to our notions: it was five
| feet ten in length and four and half feet
| broad. 1t did not matter very much what
was the matter with you. You might have
| just touch of scatfca gout or some
| other unselfsh illness, the kind of maiady
| which is for your own personal pleasure
| and does not insist on communicating itself
| to your neighbor but according to your
| luck and the vacant pillows there CHANGED
| to be, You might be thrust into the COM
| pany of three people suffering from any
! three virulent infectious diseases known to
| man. AT your side perhaps there would be
| an interesting case of smallpox; your feet
| would touch the right shoulder of man in
| the last stages of typhoid fever. and the left
| shoulder of a patient in a violent consump-
| ton. Your chances of adding few mala-
| dies to your innocent muScle-acheS were
considerably better than your chances Of
| a cure
There was one good point about these
| ho: pital methods of a century ago; the pa
in,,tc L mir nd Nnf
| was there plenty of company with you but
| the bed had solid wood roof above it and
| thick red curtains all around 1t to keep out
| the air. 1t is true you might very well die
| from suffocation and from inhaling at every
| breath a joyous company of assorted mi
| clobes, but at any rate you would not
! catch cold. Every schoolboy knew in those
| days that clean fresh air was fatal to deli
| cate constitutions.
So anxious We're the authorities to keep
| up a good supply of warmth that all the
| hospital cooking was done in the sick rooms
1t is true there wasn't very much to be
done; special diets for particular maladies
| were unthought of for the poor. The city
saved on the food bills by offering every
| one twice day in heavy iron can nice
| thick greasy meat soup with a chunk OF
bread. If any sick person was too dainty
to swill the mess down at the regulation
hour, well, that was his lookout-and what
| was the world coming to anyhow! Begsars
| shouldn't be choosers.
The Days of COpfous Bleeding.
| There were also the cheerful days OF
| copious bleeding They bled you If you had
| too much blood and they bled you II you
| had too little. Anaemic persons generally
| expired after the third bleeding, but that
must be their own fault. because, look you,
| all the books from Gaien downward proved
| conclusivey that the way to insure rich
| supply of good, wholesome blood was to get
| rid at once of all the thin, corrupted fluid
;.f ~, N
Besides, the bleeding of the poverty-stricken
| patients made fine sport for the nobility
| and gentry. 1t was a fashionable amuSe-
ment to make tour of the hospitals in the
| morning and "sympathize' with the SICK
| Ladies of the court used to arrive, In their
| silken furbeiows and with headdresses six
| feet high, and attend the puncturing and
the carving of the patients. 1t gave them
| pleasant shudder and was an agreeable way
Of exercising Christian charity. For gentle
| women of that day were not overdelicate.
| They loved to witness bull batting and cock
fighting, and often lent the grace of their
| presence to the still more exciting sport of
i executing men and women in the public
square at break of day. A milder, modern
form of the same thing, by the way, was
| the conduct of the aristocratic DANES who
twent out recently to South Africa to
| nurse wounded Britons bored by Boer
bullets.
Surgery by Ducal Bleeder.
An old print at the Pavilion shows group
|
! round four-pillowed bed in the Hotel Dieu.
| where no less a parsonage than the royal
Due de Chartres, in wig and sword and
| silken kneebreeches, is jabbing a knife into
| the arm of a poor patient, bleeding him for
| the good Of his health. The illustrious COM
pany looks -aon with admiration for the
| dukes skill and condescension shining in
| every eye; the ohsequious doctors hold ba-
sins for the blood to spout into. What the
patient thought of 1t all is not indicated;
! probably he accepted 1t meekly he ac-
cepted the four-pillowed bed and the greasy
| soup, and all the rest. do not be poor"
| was the best advice a father in those days
| could give to his sons; poverty ma de strange
| bedfellows then and was spectacle for the
amusement of noble persons.
Compare the Hotel Dieu Of the ufctur-
esque eighteenth century with any hospital
of "our ugly, unromantic, degenerate age"
In the one case it is dirt, ignorance, bru-
| tality; in our days it is spotless, clean lin
ems, scientific care that goes to give the
| sick a better chance of life, or. in the ex-
| treme case, a happier last week or So than
| they had at any previous epoch of the