to himself with
horror that it would be almost less cruel to allow the human race to
perish than to preserve it with so little care and consideration!" There
were then imprisoned here a considerable number of female insane who
were considered incurable, and whose condition was even more
frightful,--they were "chained in small wooden cells, low and narrow,
veritable dungeons, damp and infectious, receiving light and air only by
the door, and they were treated with the utmost brutality. That which
rendered their dwellings more deadly, frequently fatal, was that, in
winter, during the inundations of the Seine, these cells, situated on a
level with the drains, became not only much more insalubrious, but,
moreover, a place of refuge for very large rats, which during the night
attacked the wretches confined there and bit them on every exposed
portion of their bodies."

"At the morning visit, these lunatics would be found with their feet,
their hands, and their faces torn by bites, which were very often
dangerous, and of which several of them died."

In a report of one of the _administrateurs des hospices_, M. Desportes,
this fact is attested; and one of the first cares of the conseil general
of the hospices was to order a general renovation and reform, a thorough
cleansing out. On the 1st Germinal, year X, the population of the
Salpetriere was reduced to four thousand individuals,--three thousand
and forty in good health, six hundred insane, and three hundred sick. In
1815, the large building devoted to the epileptics was completely
restored, and three years later the basement cells were all closed; in
1823, the hospital took the name of _Hospice de la Vieillesse-femmes_.
In 1834, 1835, and 1836, further improvements and additions were made,
and in 1845 the great reservoir of water was constructed, fed by the
canal de l'Ourcq.

[Illustration: GARDES MUNICIPAUX: ARREST OF A DESERTER. After a drawing
by I. Marchetti.]

By royal letters-patent accompanying the edict of April 27, 1656, the
union, under the direction of the Hopital-General, of the Salpetriere,
the hospital Saint-Jacques, the Hotel de Bourgogne, and other houses,
revenues, and dependencies appertaining to the Confrerie de la Passion,
was declared; but the Hopital Saint-Jacques never came into this union.
To the Bicetre were sent all the poor, men, sick and well; the Pitie was
devoted in part to boys and youths, and at the _maison de Scipion_ were
established