=An Inquiry in the Hospitals.=--Two years ago one of us betook himself to M. X., an important official in one of our ministries, in order to ask him to join a Ministerial Commission which was going to pay a visit to one of our asylum-schools. M. X. shrugged his shoulders, and replied energetically: "No, no, no! I have had enough of such visits. I will go neither to the Salpêtrière nor to Bicêtre. What would I see there? An idiot who allows his saliva to collect in his open mouth; another who has epileptic fits; a third who can say nothing but 'Ba, ba!' What would that prove? The only way in which one can find out whether a school for bad cases of mental deficiency is good for anything, is to find out the mental condition of those who leave. How many defective subjects are there who, after having been treated at the Salpêtrière or at Bicêtre, are able to gain their own livelihood? That is what one would like to know, and that is what no one ever tells us!" The listener to these incisive and sensible remarks replied, after a moment's reflection: "I entirely agree with you. The information which you desire is of the greatest importance for judging the value of a school. I imagine that such information would be difficult to obtain. But one can try. I am willing to make the attempt." A few days later the two authors of the present work took the field. The long preliminary conversations which they had had together about this subject had convinced them that they would encounter opposition. But they decided to treat the question as one treats a scientific matter--with perseverance, with courage, and without _parti pris_ of any kind. Let us subdivide the question to make it more plain. We proposed to discover the value of a school. To make such an inquiry really complete, it would be necessary to consider the question from two points of view--the one educational, the other social. The educational return consists in the degree of instruction which the institution succeeds in giving to its pupils, after so much time, and with so much expense. In the case of an institution for the sick, the return will take the medical form of a cure or improvement of health. In order to estimate such various returns, it would evidently be necessary to be in possession of various data: (1) A knowledge of the state of instruction or the state of health of the subjects on their admission to the school; (2) a knowledge of their state of instruction or of health on leaving, so that one would be able to estimate by comparison what they owe to the school; (3) a knowledge of the cost for each pupil, whether for instruction or for medical expenses.