An important institution in Paris, to which we have practically no counterpart in England, is one for the nursing of the indigent poor at their homes. It is admirably organised, and has done a great deal of inestimable work; and Dr. Le Fort is as proud of it as he seems ashamed of the Paris hospitals. On the 25th of May, 1791, the municipality of Paris was charged by the administration with the distribution amongst the different parishes of the funds raised for the poor. On the 5th of August a municipal “Commission of Benevolence” was formed to consider the best method of administering aid to the indigent; and it is to this commission that the creation of the “offices of benevolence” is due. At the present time these offices relieve some twenty Paris mayoralties, besides freeing the hands of the hospital administration. Each office consists of the mayor of the arrondissement, as president; two assistants, twelve administrators, an unlimited number of commissionaires and sisters of charity, and a secretarial treasurer. Attached to each office are physicians and surgeons, midwives, etc. The scheme comprises, in each arrondissement, two or three “houses of assistance” where the poor come to seek aid for their sick friends, and where patients inscribed on the list of the indigent may have gratuitous consultations, medicine, and so forth. Fifty-three such houses are distributed over the capital. [Illustration: ATTENDANTS’ ROOM IN A PARIS HOSPITAL.] Any poor or necessitous person wishing to be nursed at home through this organisation applies in person or by deputy to the office in his particular arrondissement, and if his case proves to be one requiring medical aid, the doctor attached to his section is instructed to visit him. Dr. Le Fort draws a very strong contrast indeed between the Paris hospitals and the “houses of assistance.” The former institutions he declares to be, as a whole, the “most defective and murderous in Europe”; the latter, a “title to glory” for the city of Paris. He attributes the difference to the fact that the medical element is eliminated from the direct administration of the hospitals, but allowed its proper sway in the “benevolence” system. Certainly, one advantage of this system is that it strengthens those family ties which a long residence in hospital relaxes and too often breaks.