This was in 1691. For nearly a hundred years afterward the severe cases of venereal disease were sent to Bicêtre, the milder ones kept at Salpétrière. Both establishments were a disgrace to humanity. The patients were cheated of the food allowed them, and supplied with cheap broth and cheese in its stead. No baths, and but few medicines were at their command. Their ward was filthy, close, and in ruin. Patients were often obliged to wait so long for medical attendance that their maladies became incurable. The air in which they lived was pestiferous, and no one could visit the hospital without being shocked at its aspect.[205] Medical men who saw the place expressed amazement that so many persons should exist in so small a room. Eight women slept in a bed, and in the room appropriated to those whose turn for treatment had not come, the patients slept by gangs, one half sleeping from 8 P.M. to 1 A.M., and the remainder from 1 A.M. to 7 A.M. The floor was covered with dirt and filth, and the windows were nailed down, for fear of their being broken if opened. There was but little linen, and that was in rags, and abominably dirty. One hundred persons only were treated at a time, fifty men and fifty women. A new batch was admitted to treatment every two months, and, as the hospital always contained from three to four hundred sufferers, some cases remained six or eight months without any treatment whatever. Many died before they reached the hands of the doctors. The diet was the same for all. Those who had not been admitted to treatment were supplied with coarse bread, cheese, rancid butter, and (very seldom) a little meat. The surgeons of Bicêtre usually made fortunes in a short time.[206] If any thing farther were needed to characterize the hospital of Bicêtre in the eighteenth century, it would be the rules in virtue of which no diseased person could claim admission until a complete year had elapsed from the time of their first application, and every diseased person was turned out, whether ill or well, after six weeks' treatment. It was stated to M. Parent-Duchatelet that the average mortality was one hundred women and sixty men per annum.[207] In 1787, Dr. Cullerier was appointed surgeon in charge of syphilitic cases at Bicêtre. He commenced his administration by denouncing the state of things he found there, and it is mainly from the _memoires_ he addressed to the government that the preceding facts have been obtained. His representations seem to have met with but little success. In 1789, however, the bulk of the prisoners at Bicêtre were set free, and he immediately availed himself of the increased room to accommodate his patients.