which only women occupy, she is where her sex
receives only mechanical consideration, and a
woman is never more woman-hearted than when
lying on a sick-bed. She is treated with
kindness and medicine—to the best of human
knowledge, the right medicine; but not exactly, to the
best of human knowledge, the right form of
kindness. She is not tempted to look for the
peculiar sympathy she craves, and becomes only
the more secretive, speaks with reserve even
about the details of her sickness, which must
needs be told. But if it is natural for a poor
woman to feel most at ease, and therefore to thrive
better mentally and bodily, when she receives
medical treatment in a hospital wholly designed
for the help of women and young children, the
relief it is to her to receive surgical treatment
in such an establishment must be greater still.
Let any lady ask herself whether she would
rather, when in peril of her life, lie sick as a
person in a general hospital, or as a woman in a
hospital for women, and observe how far the
choice is determined by her rank, and how far
by the nature that she has, in Common with the
humblest of her sex.

We believe, then, that although there may
be resources for the treatment of the diseases
peculiar to women in the general hospitals.
yet the establishment of special hospitals for
women is a matter not so much of "facts and
figures" as of feeling. It results not from
a calculation of the number of sick women
among the poor, great as the number is, but
from a consideration of their ways of thought
and of the influences they will find most
wholesome. If this opinion be right, it will be
easy to judge of the working of a Woman's
Hospital, and easy to say whether it is doing all
its duty.

Twelve years ago, the institution we have
named the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women
and Young Children was founded by a few kind-
hearted people who subscribed a little money
among themselves; rented, for five shillings a
week, a small room in a back street in a densely
peopled part of Marylebone; and opened it as a
dispensary for sick women and children as a
place of help for the weak when at their weakest.
In the first year nearly four thousand of these
feeble sufferers found their way to the dingy
little room in search of help, and had it. That
such help was wanted, the increasing
pressure of those who applied for it, was evidence;
enough.

The number of patients was too great for the
resources of so narrow an establishment. The
ground floor of a house was taken. Ladies
possessing means and leisure, and the heart to
use them well, assisted actively in this
endeavour to relieve their poorer sisters and the
sick children they cherished. The number
asking for relief increased to six or seven thou-
sand in a year. The choice between hunger and
toil pressed in its direst form on many of these
people. With their flesh pierced by the dart of
death, they quivered in their work-rooms,
tottered about their labour in the streets, hugged
to their hearts the little creatures depending on
their industry for daily life, often concealed the
wound from the hard-working husband, upon
whom the fall of his household would descend,
perhaps, as utter ruin upon earth, or from the
idle husband who mocked suffering with drunken
gibes. Five times more tedious, five times more
hopeless in such homes than in a hospital, is
the malady that can receive only a few snatches
of attention, that is deepened by privation,
overstrained exertion, and the gnawing of a brood
of cares which have their nest by the cold
hearth.

To join the help of medicine, the comfort of
kind words, and gentle human deeds, became the
labour of the ladies who associated themselves
with the working of this institution. A special
fund was established by them for the relief of some
of that worldly distress which is the source of
sorrow and of sickness, and it is still maintained
as a Samaritan Fund in association with the
Samaritan Hospital. It is a fund managed by a
Committee of Ladies that has its own meetings
twice a week within the house upon true
woman's business, their study being to maintain to
the utmost in all workings of the institution
that peculiar sympathy with the sick woman and
child which should be the distinctive character
of any hospital designed for their especial use.
The Committee is composed of Ladies having
rank and consideration, and of the energy with
which they carry out their undertaking there is
evidence in the fact that when, the other day, an
active resident matron was removed for a lew
weeks by sickness from her duty, one of these
ladies came herself to reside in the hospital, and
gave her time up to the doing of the matron's
daily round of work.

But we have not yet finished the story of the
past. In the year 'fifty-one the development of
this institution had been so rapid that a house
was taken for it in Orchard-street, Portman-
square, and a few beds were fitted up, so that
complete charge might be taken of a few among
the many sufferers in need of relief. Last year,
when altogether more than sixty thousand women
and young children had received help through the
endeavour, simply and quietly begun in a poor
room, rented at five shillings a week; when the
annual number helped had come to be about
eight thousand, and the daily counsel of
accomplished surgeons and physicians was being freely
given to about one hundred and thirty daily
applicants; the strength represented by a
subscription list had enlarged to about twelve
hundred a year the strength represented by the
patronage of men of influence had become
great and, above all, the strength represented
by the influence and energy of the Ladies'
Committee was at its highest.

The institution then again enlarged its
influences. The spacious house now occupied
by it in Edward-street, Portman-square, was
fitted up as a wholesome, well-appointed
hospital. The dining-room (or we should rather
say, since the street is one of trade, the
place of the shop) is fitted up as a committee-