We possess no information with regard to the treatment used in this new hospital. It is certain, however, that, in obedience to the law of its foundation, patients were soundly whipped when they entered and when they left it, by way of punishing them for having contracted the disease. In 1675 the managers of the hospital declared that this practice deterred many sick persons from coming forward and confessing their condition; but it prevailed, apparently, for a quarter of a century afterward. About the middle of the seventeenth century, under the reign of Louis XIV., a hospital prison, named the Salpétrière, was established for the reception of prostitutes; but, by a strange inconsistency, in 1658 it was closed to women suffering from syphilis (_femmes gatées_), and physicians were directed to examine all women "who showed symptoms of syphilis on the face." A few years' experience showed the fallacy of this system. Diseased women were confined in the place; should they not be treated there? The physicians thought they should, and accordingly, though in violation of the rules of the establishment, a small room was appropriated to this class of patients. It appears that at this time a prostitute found some difficulty in obtaining admission to the Salpétrière; it being not unusual for unfortunate creatures to have themselves arrested for vagabondage, and to submit voluntarily to the whipping which the ethics of the day required in the case of females as well as males, in order to obtain medical treatment. It will be seen that our New York system can not claim the merit of originality. Prostitutes, in fact, flocked to the Salpétrière in such numbers that the room furnished by the connivance of the authorities was soon far too small to accommodate them. The hospital managers declared to the royal government that medical treatment was out of the question in so crowded an apartment, and that a putrid fever might be expected if better accommodations were not provided. In reply, the government placed at their disposal a ward in the hospital of Bicêtre.