_Proposed new Female Hospital at Portsmouth._—When military female hospitals were first designed, it was intended that they should receive only lying-in and general cases from married soldiers’ families in separate pavilions. But at a subsequent date zymotic cases were admitted into the same pavilion with general cases. Very decided objections were, however, urged against this step by medical officers, and the next hospital planned was divided into three distinct pavilions. It was intended for Portsmouth garrison, and is shown in the annexed figure. A female hospital on this plan has been erected at Dublin, with the two end wards built in the line of the corridor beyond the ends of it, in place of at right angles to the corridor, as shown in the proposed Portsmouth plan. By this form of construction the cases received from soldiers’ families can be divided into three classes: general, infectious, and midwifery—each class in its own separate building. Such, however, has been the feeling of medical officers as to the undesirableness of trusting even to this amount of separation, that at Dublin the ‘infectious’ cases have been removed to another locality altogether. The same separation had been already effected at Chatham and Woolwich. Close observation of lying-in cases has led to further change in the construction, and it is now proposed to adopt for lying-in wards in female hospitals a different form of arrangement altogether: namely, to divide the lying-in pavilion into separate one-bed rooms, as shown on Plan IV. The experience of these small military female lying-in hospitals has shown the favourable effect of simplicity of construction, plenty of space, light, and fresh air, perfect cleanliness, a small number of lying-in beds, not by any means constantly occupied, administration separate from that of general hospitals, and allowing the lying-in women to return to quarters in as few days after delivery as their recovery admits. But there is one remarkable instance in which a plan of construction, on the principle of the earlier British military female hospitals described above, has been adopted without having led to equally satisfactory results. The new ‘Maternité’ belonging to the Hôpital Cochin at Paris has been constructed on a ground-plan similar to that at Woolwich, viz., with two pavilions projecting in line from a centre, and containing two ten-bed wards. It is in two floors, with small wards on the upper floor. Part of its sanitary arrangements are certainly not what we should adopt in this country, but there are many hospitals in which there are worse defects. Puerperal fever appeared in this hospital within a month of its being opened. Where so much attention had been paid to construction, the causes of the fever must be looked for somewhere else than in the ward plan.