ful
members of their community. At the Bicetre, this section is visited by
foreign physicians as a model institution; the honor of its installation
is due entirely to Doctor Bourneville, who was a zealous advocate of its
establishment before the Conseil Municipal, and who, as _medecin de
service_ at the hospital, has succeeded in obtaining admirable results
from the methods employed. The number of his little patients is somewhat
under four hundred; some of them are sound bodily and others almost
helpless; with the exception of the _gateux_ [feeble-minded and
incontinent], they are divided, according to their age, or their
infirmities, into two schools, the "little" and "great," the first
under the direction of women, and the second of men. The children of the
first are taught to exercise with the gymnastic apparatus of the system
Pichery, and their rudimentary senses are cultivated by giving them
small objects to see, to touch, to weigh, etc.; in both schools, but
principally in that of the older pupils, systematic instruction is
imparted in the workrooms of cabinet-making, shoemaking, sewing,
locksmithing, basket-making, the plaiting of straw seats for chairs,
brushmaking, and printing. The children are gradually accustomed to this
labor; the cabinet-makers and locksmiths are selected from among the
most intelligent, the makers of baskets and straw seats from among the
most feeble, and the tailors from among those paralyzed on one side. "We
have in the sewing-room," said Doctor Bourneville, in one of his
reports, "twenty-four afflicted with hemiplegia, that is to say,
unfortunates condemned, almost certainly, to pass their entire existence
in the hospice; five of them are already good tailors, the greater
number of the others will be. Formerly, they knew how to do nothing;
now, thanks to the instruction which they receive, whether transferred
to the epileptic adults if they are still subject to attacks, or to the
divisions of the hospice if they are not, they will be able to work in
the common atelier of the institution, and their work will compensate in
part, and during very many years, for the cost of their maintenance,
and, at the same time, will afford them a small pecuniary resource." The
little workmen are rewarded with slight payments, of from ten to forty
centimes a week, and special efforts are made, as recommended in the
system Seguin, to provide them with amusements and variety,--such as
walks abroad, visits