We will now say a few words concerning the special hospitals and dispensaries. And first, it is to be remembered that all are not of the same merit. Many of them may be said to be above praise; but some, it is to be feared, are almost beneath contempt. Indeed, the opinion of those in the medical profession best able to judge of the matter is, we believe, strongly opposed to the multiplication of special hospitals, except of course for those diseases which cannot be advantageously treated in the general hospitals. Enumerating now the special hospitals and dispensaries in their alphabetical order, first of all come those for the treatment of cancer, of which there are two. Then there are eight hospitals for children. A visit to the hospital in Great Ormond Street is calculated to make most persons enthusiastic on the subject of well-managed children’s hospitals; and many readers will remember the glowing description given by Charles Dickens of the East London Hospital for Children. Of hospitals for diseases of the chest there are five. The physicians of the general hospitals do not, if they can avoid it, admit patients suffering from consumption. The air of a hospital in which wounds and diseases of almost every kind are being treated is ill fitted to give any good chance of recovery to a case of consumption, which requires almost more than anything else fresh air and plenty of it; and if such a patient gets no good, he only occupies uselessly the place of some one who might benefit greatly by admission. Chest diseases require, too, arrangements for the securing of appropriate temperature, and this it would not be easy to do in a general hospital. It is well, therefore, that there should be special hospitals for diseases of the chest, and it is to be regretted the number is at present quite insufficient. Still, these chest hospitals contrive to treat a very large number of patients in the course of the year, the average being estimated at considerably over thirty-two thousand. There are six hospitals and infirmaries for the throat and ear; and three for diseases of the nervous system. Next we come to the fever hospitals—four in number. It is almost impossible to overrate the value of these hospitals. They not only tend to prevent the occurrence of epidemics, by removing the fever-stricken from the healthy, but they also save many from the untimely death that might have befallen them in their own ill-ventilated homes, and with the intermittent nursing which alone they could have secured. And further; even when the danger of death is past, the continuous care which can be given to patients in a hospital may restore many more to sound health, who in their own homes would only have escaped death to remain for the rest of their days miserable invalids.