The only _amende_ that could be made was to shut up the ward; and having done this in the interest of womankind, need it be said that the impression produced by these statistics confirms the conclusion just stated in regard to existing lying-in wards generally, and is that not a single lying-in woman should ever pass within the doors of a general hospital? Is not any risk which can be incurred outside almost infinitely smaller? And as a general hospital must always be a hospital, must not this verdict be an absolute one, not one which can be altered or reversed? _INFLUENCE OF CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT OF LYING-IN WARDS ON THE DEATH-RATE._ Before, however, surrendering entirely the principle of special lying-in institutions, it is only fair to enquire whether the construction, management, and arrangements of existing hospitals of this class may possibly have had any influence upon the mortality, apart from the mere fact of bringing lying-in cases together under one roof. This question is the more important because we now know that construction and arrangement of buildings exert a notable effect on the death statistics of general hospitals. It is at last universally admitted that airy open site, simplicity of plan, subdivision of cases under a number of separate pavilions, large cubic space, abundant fresh air, mainly from windows on the opposite sides of the wards, drainage arrangements entirely outside the hospital, are essential conditions to the safety of all general hospitals. But, as already stated, it is likewise admitted that lying-in women are peculiarly susceptible to ‘blood-poisoning.’ This being the case, have we any reason to expect other than a high death-rate if we collect lying-in women into such wards, or rather rooms, as are found in many old hospitals? Nobody with ordinary knowledge of the subject, and desirous simply of benefiting suffering people, would now dream of appropriating buildings of this kind as hospitals for sick. But it is to be feared that the same scruple has not always existed with regard to lying-in women. And as we now know that such buildings give high death-rates among sick and wounded people, there is every reason to fear that they have had their share in raising the death-rate among lying-in women to a greater extent than that due merely to the fact of agglomeration. As instances of the existence of danger from such causes, and also from grave errors in administration, two or three illustrations are here introduced from existing lying-in establishments.