The first clinical institution in Austria was organized in Vienna, in 1754, by Van Swieten, though there was an "ambulatory clinic" (out-patient department) in Prague nine years before. During the century, however, hospitals were everywhere in bad condition. In the Hôtel-Dieu, at Paris, several patients--even as many as six--were sometimes put in the same bed; the convalescent and the dying found themselves thus associated; in Vienna the Allgemeines Krankenhaus was composed of seventeen hospitals that subsequently were amalgamated into one. In London numerous hospitals were founded, and as the medical staff of each became eminent they attracted numerous pupils; but later it became necessary to relieve the hospital wards, and private institutions for instruction were established by popular{232} teachers, the most celebrated being the "Windmill Street School of Anatomy," founded by William Hunter about 1770, and the private school of Sir William Blizzard, which, established in 1780, developed, five years later, into the London Hospital Medical School. While few, if any, of the lectures were compulsory, particularly in the natural sciences, even more attention than now was bestowed upon the accessory branches; botany, chemistry, and natural history were the recreation of many students and physicians. Pupils enjoyed the privilege of studying what they pleased--as they do practically to-day in the Portuguese University of Coimbra,--and professors exercised to the utmost their individuality in teaching. In Spain natural sciences found no admission, and even so late as 1770 no instruction in these branches was given, as they were regarded as dangerous to the purity of the faith; mineralogy for mining purposes was an exception, for even the most faithful Catholic needs money. At the universities medical students were not permitted to go out without their scholastic cloaks,--a regulation that still obtains in Spain. That the number of students has enormously multiplied may be seen from the fact that the little University of Giessen, with scarcely any medical school at all, has always more students than had Halle in the days of the famous Hoffmann. In the middle of the last century Würzburg had at one time but _three_ medical students, while to-day it has in the neighborhood of five hundred. Even then it was complained that, on account of the number of students, there was an educated proletariat arising, and in 1791 it was proposed, in Austria, that the rush for study should be repressed.