There are at Antwerp 26 private hospitals, founded and established for many centuries by charitable persons in favour of a stated number of aged persons, of both sexes, and of decent and respectable families; but in preference for the members of the founders’ family, and which persons, without being entirely destitute, have, notwithstanding, no sufficient means to provide for their subsistence. Those persons inhabit a small house in the hospital, where they keep their own household separately, and subsist by what they can earn personally by any hand-work, and by the weekly succour which they receive from the revenue of the foundation. These men and women reside in separate hospitals. Destitute persons, of both sexes, who are impotent through age, but have not claims to be admitted into the before-mentioned private hospital, are maintained by the administrations of the poor, the sick, incurable, and impotents, in the civil hospital, and the others in the country, where they are boarded with the farmers at the expenses of the public establishment of charity; that is to say, of the administration of the civil hospitals and bureau de bienfaisance. Besides, there is at Antwerp a special establishment as a refuge to the impotent through age, of decent and respectable families, who are without means of procuring a livelihood. _Sick._ In Belgium every town has its civil hospital for the maintenance of destitute sick. That of Antwerp is open to all the unfortunate, without distinction, whenever their social position does not afford them the means of being attended by a physician at their dwellings, who are deemed proper objects for admission. Are also admitted, in a private room in this hospital (upon payment of a small daily retribution), all individuals who, although not entirely destitute, prefer to be treated in the hospital rather than at their own houses; such as men and female servants, who are commonly sent there by the persons who have them in their employ. Indigent persons, born at Antwerp, are treated at the hospital at the expense of the establishment. Those who are not of the town, but are of the country, are treated there at the expense of the commune where they have their domicile de secours. These expenses are fixed at the rate of 62 cents., or 1 franc 31 centimes (1_s._ 0½_d._ sterling) per diem, whatever may be the sickness. The expenses, for the treatment of those who have no domicile de secours, are repaid by government out of the treasury funds. The town provides for the insufficiency of the private revenue of this establishment, in the same manner as it does for the bureau de bienfaisance, by means of “subsidies in aid,” paid out of the municipal funds. This amount of “subsidies” varies annually according to the wants of the administration of the hospital.