Statistics are very justly resorted to for the solution of many of our problems, but their conclusions cannot be blindly adopted in medical cases; physicians themselves often warn us against glancing them over without investigation. Figures do, however, undeniably prove that mortality in hospitals is much larger than in private dwellings. A considerable number of patients, to whom fresh air is a boon, cannot breathe a vitiated atmosphere with impunity. Crowding is particularly prejudicial to the wounded and in lying-in hospitals. "In 1861," says Dr. Brochin, in his _Encyclopædia of Medical Sciences_, "the proportion of patients cured by home relief was 49 to 100, while the proportion of deaths in private dwellings was 9 to 100. During this same period, deaths in the hospitals were 13 to 100. The average space of time required for the treatment of each patient in his own home is from 14 to 39 days; in the hospitals, from 25 to 83. The average cost of a patient per day is 1 fr. 19 c.; the entire treatment of each, 16 frs. 90 c.; whereas, in the hospitals, a patient costs 2 frs. 25 c. per day, and 61 frs. 45 c. for an entire cure. These figures plead in favor of home relief." A great deal has been said in these latter times of those immense edifices pompously called "Model Hospitals." There is Lariboisière, for instance, and the new Hôtel Dieu. It would have been wiser had the government spent less in one instance, and been more lavish in another; for, while these magnificent buildings were being erected, palaces were also in course of construction all over the capital, and the laboring classes, thus driven from their workshops, were compelled to seek lodgings up in attics or in out-of-the-way localities. If some trouble had been taken to cleanse and widen the poor man's tenement, or had something been done towards putting him in the way of getting food at little cost, we should boast fewer façades, fewer sumptuous edifices, but the work would be more meritorious. Physicians have energetically opposed the idea of accumulating so large a number of patients in the Hôtel Dieu as it was originally intended it should contain. Let us trust the observations of experienced men will be taken into consideration, and that the number of beds will be diminished before final arrangements are completed. HOSPITAL BEDS.