n itself with such
reminiscences!

REPORT ON THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES.

An attentive glance at the past has been, in all ages and in all
countries, the infallible means of rightly appreciating the present.
When we direct this glance to the sanitary state of Paris, the name of
Bailly will again present itself in the first line amongst the promoters
of a capital amelioration, which I shall point out in a few words.

Notwithstanding the numerous acts of parliament,--notwithstanding the
positive police regulations, which dated back to Charles IX., to Henry
III., to Henry IV., slaughter-houses still existed in the interior of
the capital in 1788; for instance, at l'Apport-Paris, La Croix-Rouge, in
the streets of the Butcheries, Mont-Martre, Saint-Martin, Traversine,
&c. &c. The oxen were, consequently, driven in droves through frequented
parts of the town; enraged by the noise of the carriages, by the
excitements of the children, by the attacks or barking of the wandering
dogs, they often sought to escape,--entered houses or alleys, spread
alarm everywhere, gored people, and committed great damage. Fetid gases
exhaled from buildings too small and badly ventilated; the offal that
had to be carried away gave out an insupportable smell; the blood flowed
through the gutters of the neighbourhood, with other remains of the
animals, and putrefied there. The melting of tallow, an inevitable
annexation of all slaughter-houses, spread around disgusting emanations,
and occasioned a constant danger of fire.

So inconvenient, so repulsive a state of things, awakened the solicitude
of individuals and of the public administration; the problem was
submitted to our predecessors, and Bailly, as usual, became the reporter
of the Academical Committee. The other members were Messrs. Tillet,
Darcet, Daubenton, Coulomb, Lavoisier, and Laplace.

When Napoleon, wishing to liberate Paris from the dangerous and
insalubrious results of internal slaughter-houses, decreed the
construction of the fine slaughter-houses known by everybody, he found
the subject already well examined, exhibited in all its points of view,
in Bailly's excellent work. "We ask," said the reporter of the
Academical Commission in 1788, "we ask that the shambles be removed to a
distance from the interior of Paris;" and these interior shambles have
disappeared accordingly. Does it create surprise that it required more
than fifteen years to obtain the grant of this most reasona