From the day when Rahere the troubador, in the year 1123 A.D., founded the hospital of St Bartholomew, the number of hospitals, dispensaries, infirmaries, and other institutions for the cure and medical treatment of the sick poor, has gone on increasing, till now it stands at considerably over one hundred and fifty for London and its district alone. This is altogether exclusive of the workhouse infirmaries. Besides hospitals and dispensaries, there are included in the above number institutions for the supply of surgical instruments, &c., either free, or at such reduced prices as bring them within the reach even of the very poor. Twelve of the London hospitals have medical schools attached to them, amongst which is one for the education of lady-doctors. Differences of opinion of course exist as to the medical woman, some no doubt regarding her as a great acquisition, and one of the glories of the nineteenth century; whilst others would speak of her as an institution naturally to be expected in the dark ages, but quite an anomaly in a civilised age. Which of the views may be the correct one, we will not pretend to say. However this may be, in Henrietta Street stands the medical school for women, which is in connection with the Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s Inn Road. The hospitals with medical schools attached undertake the treatment of almost every form of disease both surgical and medical. Still, there are some diseases which it is necessary should be treated apart in special hospitals, and the chief of these is that terrible scourge of past times, smallpox. Not only smallpox but scarlet fever and other infectious diseases have to be excluded from some of the hospitals of which we are speaking, inasmuch as they are not all provided with wards set apart for infectious cases. To get an idea, however, of the great variety of work undertaken by the largest hospitals, it may be well to glance at the various departments of medicine and surgery represented at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the oldest of these London institutions. In addition to the out-patients’ rooms, and wards devoted to the treatment of ordinary medical and surgical diseases and accidents, there are the following special departments: A department for skin diseases; for diseases of the eye, ear, and throat; an orthopædic department; a dental department; a department for the special diseases of women; a maternity department; and lastly, in the case of this hospital, a ward for the treatment of cases of infectious disease. The average number of in-patients is estimated at over six thousand annually, and the out-patients at more than one hundred and fifty thousand. It will readily be believed that the work of the physicians and surgeons, both visiting and resident, connected with such an institution is by no means light. There are many other general hospitals in various parts of London, besides those having medical schools attached to them, but we cannot speak of them here. The nature