After the passage of the law of 1497, a house in the Faubourg St. Germain was appropriated to the reception of the victims of syphilis; but there is no reason to believe that any attempt was made to treat them there. They were left to die, or to quack themselves. Eighteen years after, in 1505, the house in question being too small for the numbers of the sick, and it being clearly shown that syphilis was not contagious except by sexual intercourse or positive peculiar contact with the person afflicted, a new decree of Parliament appropriated funds for the construction of "a hospital for persons attacked by the large pox (_les grands vérolés_)," and directed that they should be properly cared for.[204] This decree was never carried into effect. Thirty years afterward the condition of the sick was far worse than it had ever been, they being left to die in the streets. A new decree, in 1535, appointed commissioners to choose a locality for a hospital; and, notwithstanding some opposition from the religious authorities, they performed their task. A small hospital was appropriated to syphilitic patients, and persons suffering from itch, epilepsy, and St. Vitus's dance. It was soon filled, and several patients were thrust into the same bed. Owing to mismanagement on the part of the directors, it was short of linen, lint, and medicine. The Parliament interfered, but without success; and, in despair, the unfortunate sufferers contrived to effect an entrance into the hospital general, the Hotel Dieu. They were soon admitted on the same terms as other sufferers; but, as the establishment was far too small to accommodate all who sought refuge there, they were thrust four and five together into the same bed, and persons with syphilitic diseases lay by the side of men in contagious fevers, and others with broken legs and arms. The Parliament interfered a second time. The municipal officers of Paris were assembled, and called upon to provide a hospital for venereal cases; but for many years the strenuous opposition of the Hotel Dieu neutralized all the efforts that were made. It was not till 1614 that the project of the Parliament was realized, and a syphilitic hospital actually opened. Up to this time, that is to say, for a period of a century and a quarter, persons attacked by venereal disease were left to the care of Providence. Males could, with some exertion, occasionally obtain admission to the Hotel Dieu, where they often contracted new diseases without getting rid of the old; but of females, not a word had yet been spoken. No one in that hundred and twenty-five years had ever raised a voice to plead on behalf of the prostitutes; it never seems to have occurred, even to the Parliament which had so much sympathy for the _pauvres vérolés_, that the women likewise deserved pity and attention.