Attention has lately been drawn to the extraordinarily defective nature of the attendance provided in French hospitals. Outside Paris, Lyons, and Havre, thre is scarcely a single nurse who has received a medical training. For the most part the nurses are ordinary persons of the cha woman type, engaged without the least reference to their capacities, Their pay is siserable in the e: we, there being quite a number of provincial hospitals and in-firmanes in which the nurses receive only twelve francs a year! It goes without saying that the patients are wretchedly tended. Even in Paris the hospitals still include a certain number of nurses who: have not obtained a certificate, but least an attempt is made to enlist the services of intelligent and capable women. The pay ranges from £14 to £18 a year, of course with everything found, and a pension is granted after fifteen years! service. At Lyons the hospital nurses are members of an association founded as far back as 1598, bearing the simple and dignified ti of Les Servantes des Pauvres." This ancient society has survived in its primitive simplicity and usefulness through all the political convulsions of the last three centuries. Although the society is not a religious one its members are called ers and wear the characteristic costume. Similar societies are urgently needed all over France. They would no doubt help to raise the status of nursing as a profession.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.