Bicêtre, an asylum of the same character as La Salpêtrière, derives its name from the familiar Winchester. On the site of Bicêtre, in the year of grace 1284, Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, built near Paris a manor house, which, after the name of his see, he called Winchester, soon corrupted into Wicester, which, by a further process of corruption, became successively Bicestre and Bicêtre. After going through various hands, and at last passing into the king’s possession, Bicêtre was given in 1656 by Louis XIV. to be turned into a hospital for old men above the age of seventy, lame and incurable children, the blind, the paralytic, the imbecile, and the epileptic, together with women of dissolute life, who were to be received only on condition of being corrected, whipped, and fed on bread and water. At the period of the Revolution Bicêtre was at once a hospital, an asylum, a prison, and a house of correction, until, in 1791, it became at the same time a madhouse. The lunatics were at first mixed up with the criminals, or confined in horrible dungeons, but at length the intelligent and benevolent Pinel broke their chains. It was only in 1812, however, that the lunatics were placed in a special compartment, separate at once from the criminals and from the patients. Bicêtre continued to be a prison until 1836, when it became simply a hospital. At present the dungeons of former days are used as store-rooms for provisions and drugs. [Illustration: PLACE DE CONSEIL, SALPÊTRIÈRE.] Bicêtre is a little beyond the fortifications on the road to Fontainebleau. An avenue, lined with eating houses and taverns, so plentiful at all the Barriers, leads to the principal entrance, which is surmounted by a royal escutcheon with this inscription, “Hospice de la Vieillesse--Hommes.” It is inhabited by some 3,000 persons, comprising more than four hundred officials and servants, upwards of 1,500 indigent persons, between fifty and sixty convalescents, 1,830 adult lunatics, and 120 epileptic and idiotic children. The annual cost of the establishment amounts to one million and a half francs. Bicêtre, like the Salpêtrière, is divided into departments: the Hospice on the north, where the aged and infirm of the city of Paris are gratuitously received; and the Asile, on the south, intended for the lunatics of the Department of the Seine. Like the Salpêtrière, it has more the character of a town than of a single building. Without any pretension to architecture, Bicêtre is composed of wings, outgrowths, and “annexes” of various kinds, added and super-added to the original and central structure. The shops attached to the establishment are now limited to a grocer’s and a tobacconist’s. There was formerly a shop for the sale of alcoholic drinks; but the intemperance of the customers caused the administration to banish for ever its estimable proprietor. For similar reasons the strictest regulations have been affixed to the door of the still-existing canteen.