in, natural social forces would come into play, and
dependence on any form of _annona civica_ would cease.

Hospitals.

Open-handed hospitality always creates mendicants. This is what the
hospitals offer in the out-patient and casualty departments, and they
have created a class of hospital mendicants. The cases are quickly dealt
with, without inquiry and without regard to home conditions. The medical
man in the hospital does not co-operate with any fellow-workers outside
the hospital. Where his physic or advice ceases to operate his
usefulness ceases. He regards no conditions of morality. In a large
number of cases drink or vice is the cause of application, and the cure
of the patient is dependent on moral conditions; but he returns home,
drinks and may beat his wife, and then on another visit to the hospital
he will again be physicked and so on. The man is not even referred to
the poor-law infirmary for relief. Nor are conditions of home sanitation
regarded. One cause of constant sickness is thus entirely overlooked,
while drugs, otherwise unnecessary, are constantly given at the
hospital. The hospitals are thus large isolated relief stations which
are creating a new kind of pauperism. So far as the patients can
pay--and many can do so--the general practitioners, to whom they would
otherwise go, are deprived of their gains. Still worse is it when the
hospital itself charges a fee in its out-patient department. The relief
is then claimed even more absolutely as a right, and the general
practitioners are still further injured. The doctors, as a medical
staff, are not only medical men, but whether they recognize the fact or
not, they are also almsgivers or almoners; what they give is relief. Yet
few or none of them have ever been trained for that work, and
consequently they do not realize how very advantageous, even for the
cure of their own patients, would be a thorough treatment of each case
both at the hospital and outside it. Nor can they understand how their
methods at present protract sickness and promote habitual dependence.
Were this side of their work studied by them in any way they would be
the first, probably, to press upon the governors of their hospitals the
necessity for a change. Unfortunately, at present the governors are
themselves untrained, and to finance the hospital and to make it a good
institution is their sole object. Hospitals, however, are, after all,
only a part of the general administratio