Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/346

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be always on the spot. In the case of contagious sickness there is the process of purification in the lower cells, while ordinary cases of illness are, after the consultation à la hâte, despatched to one of the bright, clean, little sick rooms on the ground-floor. Here the rooms are divided by glass partitions, which are muffed or not, as may be required. Grown patients are more likely to wish for the privacy of muffed-glass panels, whereas it is preferable that the panels should be transparent when the patients are children and need constant supervision. During convalescence, the patients, weary of solitude, can seek change by transportation to a public ward, and there is a long glass gallery, or winter garden, well located, and gay with green seats and tables, where they can walk up and down, and receive their friends among the palms and India-rubber trees. This part of the establishment has more the air of a convalescent home than a public hospital. As deaths may occur even in the best regulated hospitals, there is a subterranean passage constructed for the service des morts, by which means the living are spared all contact with lugubrious eventualities. M. Duclaux calculates that the yearly expenditure of this admirable institution will reach £20,000. Let us hope that those who profit by this foundation will prove not destitute of good feeling towards those who have spent so much time,