Alas! Dr. Griffon would have been touched, perhaps, by these severe words, but not convinced. Man is made the creature of circumstances. The captain thus accustoms himself to consider his soldiers as nothing more than the pawns of the bloody game called battle. And it is because man is thus made, that society ought to protect those whom fate exposes to the action of these "humane necessities." Now the character of Dr. Griffon once admitted (and it can be admitted without much hyperbole), the inmates of this hospital had then no guarantee, no recourse against the scientific barbarity of his experiments; for there exists a grievous hiatus in the organization of the civil hospitals. We will point it out here, so that we may be understood. Military hospitals are each day visited by a superior officer charged to receive the complaints of the sick soldiers, and to attend to them if they appear reasonable. This oversight completely distinct from the government of the hospital, is excellent--it has always produced the best results. It is, besides, impossible to see establishments better kept than the military hospitals; the soldiers are nursed with much care, and treated, we would say, almost with respectful commiseration. Why not have a similar superintendence established in the civil hospitals, by men completely independent of the government and medical faculty? The complaints of the poor (if they were well founded) would thus have an impartial organ, while at present this organ is absolutely wanting. Thus the doors of the hospital of Dr. Griffon once shut on a patient, he belonged body and soul to science. No friendly or disinterested ear can hear his grief. He is told plainly that, being admitted out of charity, he becomes henceforth a part of the experimental domain of the doctor, and that patient and malady must serve as subjects of study and observation, analysis, or instruction, to the young students who accompany assiduously the visits of M. Griffon. In effect, the subject soon had to answer to interrogations often the most painful, the most sorrowful; and that, not to the doctor alone, who like the priest, fulfills a duty, and has the right to know everything--no, he must reply in a loud voice before a curious and greedy crowd of students. Yes, in this pandemonium of science, old or young, maid or wife, were obliged to abjure every feeling or sentiment of shame, and to make the most confidential communications, submit to the most material investigations, before a numerous public; and almost always these cruel formalities aggravated their disease. And this is neither humane nor just; it is because the poor enter the hospital in the holy name of charity, that they should be treated with compassion and with respect, for misfortune has its dignity.