3-039-018 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ambulance at the Theatre Français, Paris, 1871. Franco-Prussian War: '...military hospital extemporised in the public lobby of the Theatre Français...The statue of Voltaire...is seen in the background...The beds of the wounded soldiers are ranged along both sides...The cloth stretched behind the row of beds displays the red cross of the field-hospital service, and a placard bearing the written name of the soldier laid in each bed. The lady nurse, with curls, at the third bed to the left, offering a basin of broth to the Lieutenant who has his arm in a sling, is Mdlle. Marquet; she is...beckoning to the maid-servant to bring a bottle of wine for her patient; she belongs to the Order of Sisters of Charity who serve the hospital of St. Lazare. Two other ladies, Mesdames Madeleine Brohan and Favart, are speaking with a surgeon...Behind them is a nun...giving some prescription to the apothecary, who wears a white apron. To the right is the actor, Maubant, in the uniform of a National Guard, reading the journal La Liberté aloud to a couple of convalescent patients; a Zouave, wounded in the arm, reclining at the foot of his bed; and a soldier of the Line, who supports himself with crutches, his broken leg, still bound with splints...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.