SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS.
The French Hospital System--The Laënnec Hospital--The Houses of
Assistance--The Quinze-Vingts--Deaf and Dumb Institutions--The Abbé de
l’Épée--La Charité.
The Hôtel des Invalides suggests the hospitals of Paris in general; and
to the briefest possible glance at these--inasmuch as we have already
given much space to the famous Hôtel Dieu--the present chapter may be
devoted.
“England” says Dr. Le Fort, “opens to the poor wretch without an asylum
and without bread the doors of a workhouse; France those of a prison. To
be without shelter is a misfortune in England; in France it is a crime.
Unable to suppress poverty, our law will tolerate no manifestation of
it. ‘Mendicity,’ as many a printed notice proclaims, is forbidden in the
department of the Seine.”
Dr. Le Fort maintains that the Paris poor are treated with too little
sympathy by the Legislature, and seems to think that if their wants were
more readily relieved, many an indigent invalid, whose health has
gradually given way beneath hunger and destitution, would not have found
his way into hospital.
The Paris hospitals differ from those of London on one important point.
In our metropolis all such institutions are supported by private
charity, enjoying nothing, or next to nothing, in the way of state
subventions. They are open either to the subscribers themselves or to
those whom they choose to recommend. The hospitals of Paris, on the
other hand, are practically state property, entirely independent of the
control of the public. They are beneath the domination of the Prefect of
the Seine and the Minister of the Interior; both represented by a
director fully invested with their power. Side by side with the director
exists a council of superintendence, which investigates and approves, or
disapproves, the acts of that director, without being legally able to
prevent them; for the whole of the executive is in the hands of the
chief official, who is alone responsible. The director, it should be
added, is seldom or never a physician, but a member of the
administrative body.
The council of superintendence consists, amongst its other members, of
the Prefect of the Seine, the Prefect of Police, a Councillor of State,
a member of the Court of Appeal, a Professor of the Faculty of Medicine,
a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and two members of the Municipal
Council, with a doctor and a surgeon attached to the hospital.
The medical service of the hospitals is effected by doctors and
surgeons, aided by resident and non-resident assistants, sisters of
charity, etc. The doctors and surgeons are appointed by competition, and
they can practise, in the case of the former, till sixty-five, in that
of the latter, till sixty years of age.
As regards the conditions under which patients are admitted to the
hospitals, the first of these is not, as one might suppose, that the
applicant be ill, but that he or she have been resident six months in
the department of the Seine. This condition, which excluded poor
patients coming to Paris from the provinces for special treatment,
caused some years ago a good deal of lively criticism. Complaints, too,
have frequently been made of the alleged extravagance of the
administration and of the architectural embellishment of Paris
hospitals, to the detriment of the patients upon whom in a direct manner
the funds should, it was held, have been spent. Another defect which has
been much commented upon is the inability of the surgeons to assign
beds, on their own authority, to sick applicants whom they have
pronounced to be in need of clinical treatment. Every morning, it should
be explained, gratuitous advice is given at each hospital. Those
applicants whose case is serious cannot, without further preliminaries,
have beds assigned to them. The physician has first to represent their
condition to the administrative director, and it is within the power of
this latter functionary to grant or to refuse the admission. In
practice, no doubt, the recommendation of the physician is acceded to;
but the formality might well become, in some instances, a mischievous
one.
During the day urgent cases can be received at the hospitals on the
advice of the deputy medical officers. There exists, moreover, on the
Parvis of Notre Dame, under the name of “central bureau of admission,”
an establishment in which, from ten a.m. to four p.m., advice may be had
from able physicians. Every morning the directors of the different
hospitals send to this bureau a list of their vacant beds; and the
consulting physician assigns them to applicants at his discretion.
Every invalid entering a hospital loses his or her individuality to take
a number. Monsieur 6 and Madame 8 are the kind of appellations by which
the patients are known. After having given in his or her name, age,
address, and occupation at the registration office, the patient is taken
up into the ward and undressed, receiving a grey cloak in exchange for
the vestments put off. It used to be complained that these cloaks were
passed from one patient to another without being in any way purified,
whatever diseases they might be infected with. It may be hoped that this
is no longer the case.
Soon after the new patient’s arrival he is visited by the
house-physician, who prescribes for him a treatment which the
physician-in-chief will confirm or rectify on his daily round next
morning. At five a.m. the ward-servants come on duty, and then a clatter
begins, the brush and the broom being freely plied. “So much the worse,”
says Dr. Le Fort, a severe critic of the Paris hospital system, “for the
patient who, having passed a sleepless night, is beginning to get a
little repose.” In English hospitals, however, the same turmoil reigns
at the same hour, and the sufferer from insomnia is as badly off as his
Parisian fellow.
From eight to nine a.m. the physician goes his round of visits,
accompanied by his assistants. He passes from bed to bed, feels pulses,
looks at tongues, prescribes medicines, and so forth. At ten o’clock the
breakfast-hour is sounded. Large cans, containing soup and vegetables,
are brought into the ward. The ward-servants, or _infirmiers_ present to
the sister a succession of tin basins, into which she serves out the
precise quantity of food ordered for the patients by the doctor. The
quality of the food leaves nothing to be desired. The meat supplied is
the best procurable, the fish is fresh, the vegetables irreproachable;
but the cooking is the reverse of satisfactory. A mutton cutlet, cooked
half an hour before dinner, and put in the oven to keep hot, comes
sometimes to the patient’s bedside rather like a cinder; the joints are
admirable, but as it is found convenient to carve them up some time
before the meal, and keep them likewise in the oven, a cut off the joint
occasionally means a slice of leather. Attempts have been made from
time to time by the administration to reform this style of cooking, but
the reformation has not yet, in practice, been effected.
After breakfast the patient reads or walks about. From one till three
o’clock on Sundays and Thursdays he may receive visits from his family.
At four o’clock the evening repast is served, and at eight the night
commences, all conversation, as in English hospitals, abruptly ceasing.
Thenceforth the repose of the vast wards is disturbed by nothing but the
snoring of sleepers, and the sighs or groans of those to whose eyelids
sleep will not come. The wards would now be in total darkness but for
the faint glimmer of a little lamp suspended from the ceiling.
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, RUE DE SÈVRES.]
At No. 42 in the Rue de Sèvres stood the hospital or asylum (hospice)
for incurable women, founded by the charity of Marguerite Roulié,
assisted by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, Grand Almoner of France. But
the institution has now been transferred to Ivry in a large building,
where incurable men are also received. The house in which the original
hospital for incurables was established is now occupied by the Laennec
Asylum, containing upwards of 300 beds, of which nearly fifty are for
surgical cases. Then there are charitable houses for sick and for
convalescent children. In the Rue de Sèvres (Nos. 93 to 95) is the
monastery of the priests of the mission of St. Lazare, which, since
1816, has occupied the mansion of the Duc de l’Orges.
The chapel dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul, founder of the Lazarists,
contains the relics of the saint, which were transferred to their
present abode on the 29th of April, 1830. Seventeen bishops, with all
the clergy of Paris and of the diocese, took part in the ceremony. The
brothers of the Christian schools, also the sisters of Charity and of
the Foundlings, assisted; in all upwards of 10,000 persons. This was for
the Parisians the great event of the spring of the year 1830, which,
however, in the month of July was to witness a manifestation of a very
different character: the Revolution that brought Louis Philippe to the
throne.
[Illustration: THE BLIND SCHOOL: IN THE WORK-ROOM.]
At the right corner of the Avenue of the Invalides stood, up to the time
of the Revolution of 1789, a country house belonging to the sculptor
Pigalle. The congregation of Notre Dame des Chanoinesses Régulières de
Ste. Augustine, founded there towards 1820 a house of education, which
has remained celebrated under the name of the Convent of the Birds.
Beyond the Boulevard Montparnasse, which branches off at this point
towards the Boulevard des Invalides, is the House of the Infant Jesus,
founded in 1751 by the zeal of the Abbé Languet, Curé of St. Sulpice, by
the liberality of the Marquise de Lassay, and under the patronage of
Queen Marie Lesczinska, in favour of thirty poor and noble young ladies;
to become in 1802 a hospital for sick children. Here the mortality is at
the rate of two out of eleven, which is almost twice the average
mortality in the hospitals for adults. “The idea of creating a special
hospital for children,” said Professor Bouchardat, “excellent at first
sight, is fatal for the unhappy ones who are admitted.” Contagious
diseases spread, as a matter of fact, with particular rapidity among
children. To counteract this evil the Hospice des Enfants Malades has
been provided with a garden, 31,000 square metres in extent, so as to
permit as much as possible the isolation of the little patients.
Besides the inmates of the Paris hospitals a great number of
out-patients receive treatment within their walls.
An important institution in Paris, to which we have practically no
counterpart in England, is one for the nursing of the indigent poor at
their homes. It is admirably organised, and has done a great deal of
inestimable work; and Dr. Le Fort is as proud of it as he seems ashamed
of the Paris hospitals.
On the 25th of May, 1791, the municipality of Paris was charged by the
administration with the distribution amongst the different parishes of
the funds raised for the poor. On the 5th of August a municipal
“Commission of Benevolence” was formed to consider the best method of
administering aid to the indigent; and it is to this commission that the
creation of the “offices of benevolence” is due. At the present time
these offices relieve some twenty Paris mayoralties, besides freeing the
hands of the hospital administration. Each office consists of the mayor
of the arrondissement, as president; two assistants, twelve
administrators, an unlimited number of commissionaires and sisters of
charity, and a secretarial treasurer. Attached to each office are
physicians and surgeons, midwives, etc. The scheme comprises, in each
arrondissement, two or three “houses of assistance” where the poor come
to seek aid for their sick friends, and where patients inscribed on the
list of the indigent may have gratuitous consultations, medicine, and so
forth. Fifty-three such houses are distributed over the capital.
[Illustration: ATTENDANTS’ ROOM IN A PARIS HOSPITAL.]
Any poor or necessitous person wishing to be nursed at home through this
organisation applies in person or by deputy to the office in his
particular arrondissement, and if his case proves to be one requiring
medical aid, the doctor attached to his section is instructed to visit
him.
Dr. Le Fort draws a very strong contrast indeed between the Paris
hospitals and the “houses of assistance.” The former institutions he
declares to be, as a whole, the “most defective and murderous in
Europe”; the latter, a “title to glory” for the city of Paris. He
attributes the difference to the fact that the medical element is
eliminated from the direct administration of the hospitals, but allowed
its proper sway in the “benevolence” system. Certainly, one advantage
of this system is that it strengthens those family ties which a long
residence in hospital relaxes and too often breaks.
In connection with the hospitals and relief institutions of Paris must
be mentioned the National Institution for Blind Children, founded just
after the Revolution by Louis XVI., before the Republican form of
government had been definitely adopted. Its initiator was Valentine
Hauy, the mineralogist, to whom a statue has been erected in the
principal courtyard. The Institution for Blind Children is one of the
ten general establishments of benevolence conducted under the immediate
authority of the Minister of the Interior by a responsible director,
assisted by a consultative commission. The instruction given is
(according to a writer on the subject who evidently does not set too
high a value on music) “technological, musical, and intellectual.”
Employment is found for the children on the completion of their studies.
[Illustration: LA CHARITÉ.]
The house of the strangely named Quinze Vingts is designed for the
reception of 300 blind persons of both sexes, each with his own private
apartments for himself, or himself and family, together with many other
advantages as well in money as in kind. Attached, moreover, to this
institution are 1,300 outside pensioners in all parts of the country,
receiving assistance in money according to the class to which they have
been assigned: 200 francs, 150 francs, and 100 francs.
The origin of the Quinze-Vingts, or Fifteen-Twenties, is lost in
obscurity. Hence all sorts of contradictory stories and conjectures
without foundation, substituted for positive documents. According to
some authors St. Louis, on his return from Palestine, founded the
establishment of the Fifteen-Twenties for 300 knights--the sad remains
of his army.
But the writers of the time make no mention of this alleged fact, and
the ordinances of St. Louis contain no sort of reference to it. The
legend of the 300 knights must therefore be regarded as a fable. It is
certain meanwhile that the blind asylum dates from an epoch anterior to
the reign of St. Louis, though it is quite true that this pious monarch,
by his patronage and his liberality, became the real founder of the
house.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL ON THE BOULEVARD DU PONT ROYAL.]
The Fifteen-Twenties forming a mendicant corporation, subsisting by
alms, and belonging body and soul to their own Order, were first
established in the Rue St. Honoré, not far from the Tuileries. They
remained there under the constant patronage of numerous and powerful
protectors until 1779, in which year Louis XVI. transferred the asylum
to the ancient residence of the Black Musketeers in the Rue de
Charenton. Its revenues already amounted to more than 370,000 livres
(_i.e._ francs). The constitution of the hospital was then modified,
collections in the churches were forbidden, and mendicancy in the
streets likewise. At the same time regular pensions were introduced.
* * * * *
Towards the gate of a modest edifice situated in the Rue St. Jacques,
near the Luxemburg Garden, may daily be seen visitors attracted to this
point from all quarters of France and even of the globe. The building
they wish to enter was, until 1794, the seat of the minor seminary of
St. Magloire, belonging to the Archbishop of Paris. In this year he
ceded the house to the deaf and dumb institution, which, founded in 1760
by the Abbé de l’Épée in his own domicile, Rue des Moulins, was, just
after the Revolution, raised to the dignity of a national establishment
and transferred to the ancient monastery of the Célestins near the
Arsenal. The national institution of the Rue St. Jacques, which still
exists and which is under the direction of the Minister of the Interior,
contains some 210 pupils of from seven to fourteen years. The school
comprised, until lately, two divisions entirely separate and distinct,
one for boys, the other for girls, when suddenly the girls of the Paris
institution were sent to the institution of Bordeaux, and the boys of
the Bordeaux school to that of Paris, so that at present, wherever they
may have been born, the deaf and dumb boys are all at Paris, while the
deaf and dumb girls are all at Bordeaux. Professor Ferdinand Berthier,
of the Paris deaf and dumb school, himself deaf and dumb, maintained, in
an article published some five-and-twenty years ago, that this pretended
reform was no amelioration whatever; the deaf and dumb children studying
perfectly well when the boys and girls were educated together under the
same professors. At that time the Paris institution was administered by
a director with the use of speech, assisted by an examiner of studies,
similarly gifted, and a body of professors, some of whom spoke, while
others were deaf and dumb.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL.]
[Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL.]
One of the best private deaf and dumb institutions in France is at
Lyons. It contains a good number of pupils of both sexes, and its
director is, or was until recently, M. Claudius Forestier, a very
distinguished deaf-mute; his wife, a highly educated person--the
speech-endowed daughter of the deaf-mute founder of the school--acting
as directress.
The number of deaf-mutes in France has been approximately estimated at
25,000; and here, as in nearly all countries where statistics are
published, it is found that the male sufferers are decidedly more
numerous than the female.
To each establishment, public or private, workrooms are attached,
conducted by competent instructors, and in which all the pupils, poor or
rich, serve an apprenticeship to some profession, art, or trade which
will one day enable them to earn a subsistence. No longer, therefore,
is the community encumbered by deaf and dumb idlers; the men and women
thus afflicted leading active lives as shoemakers, dressmakers, tailors,
sempstresses, locksmiths, compositors and even painters and sculptors.
[Illustration: A WARD IN THE ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL.]
[Illustration: THE REPAIRING ROOM, ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL.]
It has been complained that the deaf and dumb institutions of
France--about fifty in number--are insufficient for the instruction of
25,000 deaf-mutes, many of whom must consequently be deprived of
instruction in those employments for which they are generally as apt as
their neighbours who can speak and hear.
The question of the hereditary nature of muteness has been a good deal
discussed by French experts. “Dumbness,” says Ferdinand Berthier, “far
from being a necessary result of deafness, simply follows the latter by
reason of a natural sequence. Whether deaf-muteness dates from birth or
from some accident, it has been proved in the present day that the vocal
apparatus of the deaf-mute and that of a speaking person are with rare
exceptions equally well organised. A prejudice still too widely spread
in the world, and worthy of every effort towards its destruction, is
that deaf-muteness is infallibly transmitted from father or mother to
child; when on all sides we see deaf-mutes, married between themselves
or to speaking spouses, constantly producing children who both hear and
speak, and in no way share the parental infirmity. Those arts which
have enabled the sublimest efforts of genius to dazzle the world do not,
in our opinion, merit greater attention from scholars and philosophers
than the method which shall open to the deaf-mutes a road leading to
intellectual labour and to the full enjoyment of civil and political
rights.”
Looking back to antiquity, this excellent writer points out that the
ancients regarded the education of deaf-mutes as an impossibility both
physical and moral.
It was the custom at Sparta to allow children suffering from this double
infirmity to die of hunger and thirst in the desert, where they were for
that purpose exposed; and the laws of Solon were on this point no less
severe. Aristotle, if he did not precisely justify the rigour of such
laws, at least endorsed the moral prescription. In the fourth book of
his History of Animals he unhesitatingly relegates deaf-mutes to the
rank of idiots, declaring them hopelessly beyond all tuition. The
Republic of Rome did not show itself more humane. It was in vain that
intelligence beamed in the face of these unhappy victims: if their
tongue could produce no sound they were condemned to be flung into the
Tiber.
One of the earliest agents in the removal of this weight of infamy from
the fraternity of deaf-mutes was, curiously enough, the stage. Lucian
eulogises the pantomime of the dumb-show actors of his epoch, and the
admirable influence they exercised in raising the deaf and speechless
above general contempt. The Egyptians and Persians, more civilised and
enlightened in this respect than Sparta, Athens, or Rome, showed for
their deaf-mutes a solicitude which approached devotion.
In centuries less remote many efforts have from time to time been made
by philosophers and philanthropists to invent an effectual method of
instructing deaf-mutes. The sign method of the Abbé de l’Épée was one of
the first great steps in this direction. The abbé held that the
old-fashioned dactylology was insufficient, and that signs were
essential to those who could neither hear nor speak. Starting from the
incontestable principle that the bond existing between ideas and sounds
which strike the ear is not more intimate, more natural, than the bond
between ideas and traced characters which strike the eye, he found it by
no means difficult to demonstrate the possibility of fully replacing
speech, in the case of a deaf-mute, by mimicry.
As regards this mimicry, M. Berthier cautions people against the common
mistake of confounding it with dactylology, or the language of the
fingers. Dactylology is confined to the servile reproduction of the
letters of the alphabet of any particular language, one by one, syllable
by syllable, word by word, or in no matter what other conventional
manner. Mimicry, a faithful picture of human thought, paints ideas and
sentiments in a living language--the innate language of all nations--the
language of humanity. By means of it thoughts are exchanged more quickly
than by speech or writing--not to mention dactylology, which lags so far
behind.
In the midst of his brilliant triumphs the Abbé de l’Épée had frequently
to engage in conflict with two classes of powerful adversaries: the
philosophers and the theologians; the former regarding words as the only
vehicle for imparting metaphysical ideas, the latter regarding them as
the sole means of inculcating supernatural religious truths.
Louis XVI. had granted the abbé out of his own privy purse an annual
pension of 6,000 francs, in addition to his official appointment at the
Célestins. Hitherto the school had, for twelve years, been maintained
entirely at the cost of the founder, aided by such occasional alms as he
received for the purpose. It was at the Célestins in 1789 that he
expired, amid the weeping of his pupils and with the delightful thought
that his work would not perish with him.
Amongst the disciples of the Abbé de l’Épée must be mentioned the Abbé
Sicard, canon of Bordeaux, whom the archbishop of that town sent to
Paris, where he had founded a deaf-mute institution, in order that he
might study under de l’Épée that method of which there was so much talk.
The high talents of this young priest soon enabled him to divine,
comprehend, and complete the thought of his master in exciting the warm
sympathies of the public towards those unfortunate persons whose tongue
was tied and whose ear was stopped.
On the death of de l’Épée, Sicard competed for and was unanimously
awarded the management of the abbé’s institution. Having already written
not a little on the subject of deaf-muteness, he now published other
works, “A Deaf-mute’s Course of Instruction,” among others, which only
served to increase his renown; though in this treatise there was indeed
one highly objectionable assertion concerning the condition of a
deaf-mute which the author found it necessary to retract in his “Theory
of Signs.”
During the Revolution of 1793 the Abbé Sicard did not escape
persecution. Flung into prison after the eventful 10th of August, he was
lucky enough to keep his head on his shoulders during the massacres of
September. He had scarcely been set at liberty when, as editor of the
_Catholic Annals_, he was condemned to transportation to Cayenne; and he
passed the next two years of his life in flight far from his beloved
institution, of which he did not resume the direction till after the
Revolution of the 18th “Brumaire.” He died in 1822.
Among the professors whom he formed must be mentioned a speech-endowed
one named Bébian, who in his turn trained several deaf-mute professors.
His works are still consulted with advantage both in France and abroad
by those who wish to devote themselves to this arduous method of
instruction. The object he kept before him in writing was, as he himself
expressed it at the commencement of one of his books, “to simplify the
method and render it so easy that the mother of a family can teach her
deaf-mute child to read just as she teaches the others to speak.”
Oblivion had already seemed too long to have overspread the remains of
the Abbé de l’Épée when, in 1837, on the initiative of M. Berthier, a
numerous and distinguished committee was formed for the purpose of
raising to the clerical philanthropist a monument worthy of him in that
chapel of the church of St. Roch which belonged to his family, and in
which he was accustomed to celebrate mass, assisted by deaf-mutes. It
was here indeed that his ashes lay. An admirable sculptor, M. August
Préault, was unanimously chosen to interpret the homage which so many
famous deaf-mutes and others wished to pay to the abbé’s memory, and he
worthily carried out the intentions both of committee and subscribers.
Eight years afterwards, in 1845, a crown of laurels in bronze was placed
beside the monument with this simple inscription: “To the Abbé de
l’Épée, from the Swedish deaf-mutes.” This crown, beautifully executed,
was likewise the work of Préault. The year previously the same sculptor
had testified his own admiration of the abbé by contributing to the
Hôtel de Ville a fine statue of him. The town of Versailles, which was
proud of being the birthplace of the great founder of the deaf-mute
institution, could not do less than follow the example set by Paris in
voting to his memory a statue, which was confided to the chisel of M.
Michant. The same artist was subsequently commissioned by the Count de
Montalivet, then intendant-general of the civil list, to execute a bust
of the abbé for the historic gallery of Versailles.
[Illustration: THE TENON HOSPITAL.]
The Paris hospitals are not, like ours, supported by voluntary
contributions. Many of them have from the beginning been richly endowed.
Others depend on grants from the State or from the Municipality; while a
few are maintained from mixed sources. None of them, however, depend, as
in England, on subscriptions and donations received periodically from
charitable persons. Consequently, applicants for relief or advice need
neither letters of recommendation nor introductions of any kind. Medical
succour is given at certain hours to all who choose to ask for it.
Patients seeking admission and regular attendance have sometimes to wait
for their turn. But there are, in proportion to the population, quite as
many beds at the service of the sick in Paris as in London.
[Illustration: NURSE PUPILS AT THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.]
Of the most ancient and most famous of all the French hospitals--the
Hôtel Dieu--mention has already been made. Scarcely less celebrated, in
view of the important services they have rendered and of the many
physicians and surgeons of eminence who have lectured, operated, and
prescribed within their walls, are the two hospitals named after those
divine qualities Charity and Pity.
The Hospital of La Charité is the principal one on the left bank of the
Seine; nor is its position likely to be forgotten by those who have
heard of the famous professor of surgery--Lisfranc--and his attacks upon
the illustrious Dupuytren, head of the Hôtel Dieu, whom Lisfranc, in his
highly polemical lectures, used habitually to describe as “ce brigand de
l’autre côté de l’eau.” Lisfranc had doubtless differed with his eminent
rival on some slight theoretical point, for which reason he accused him,
with a vehemence which Molière’s own doctors might have envied, of
mental perturbations and moral offences in no way attributable to him.
No less than three benevolent institutions have been founded in Paris
under the name of Charity--the Hôpital de la Charité Chrétienne, endowed
and opened by Marguerite de Provence, widow of Louis IX., but destined
in the course of ages to disappear; the Maison de la Charité, founded
by the town of Paris at the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the
aid of Francis I., against epidemics, afterwards to become known as the
Maison de la Santé; and finally, the Hôpital de la Charité, already
referred to, which remains one of the first medical and surgical
institutions in Paris.
[Illustration: FONT AT THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.]
[Illustration: THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.]
The origin of La Charité and its history up to the time of the
Revolution are sufficiently curious. A hospital was founded at Grenada
in 1540 by St. John of God, who became the chief of a religious order
which occupied itself specially with the care of the sick. This
congregation of hospitallers spread rapidly throughout Europe, and a
certain number of its members being, in 1602, at Paris, Marguerite de
Valois, the divorced wife of Henry the Fourth, who in her old age, when
her passions had somewhat subsided, became religious, enabled them to
establish a hospital, to which the name of La Charité was given. The
brothers of the Order of St. John of God had already a place of their
own, which they gave up in order to take possession of the larger
premises placed at their disposal by Queen Marguerite. A capacious
house, surrounded by vast gardens, was the first home of La Charité.
Here patients were received and treated by the brethren, who, besides
religion, had studied medicine, surgery, and pharmacy. Their vows did
not allow them to admit women, and their utility seems to have been
further limited by insufficient knowledge of the art of healing; and
this notwithstanding the fact that several of the brethren made
themselves a great name as surgeons and physicians. In the early part of
the eighteenth century they joined to their staff medical men from the
ranks of the laity; compelled to this step by an edict from the
Parliament of Paris which ordered them to admit, without salary, a
surgeon-apprentice to help them in dressing wounds, and a master-surgeon
to share their labours generally. Throughout the eighteenth century they
found themselves constantly exposed to attacks from the members of the
various medical and surgical guilds, who claimed the sole right of
attending the sick and wounded.
[Illustration: HÔPITAL DE LA PITIÉ.]
In 1792, three years after the outbreak of the Revolution, the different
religious congregations were broken up, and the Hospital of La Charité
was placed under the direction of the Municipality of Paris. The very
title was abolished, and instead of Hôpital de la Charité--beautiful and
suggestive name!--it was now called, without the least significance,
Hôpital de l’Unité. Under the Restoration, however, its old name was
given back to it; and since then, under many changes of government, it
has retained its original appellation.
Among the other hospitals of Paris the most important are those of La
Pitié and of St. Louis, to which may be added L’Hôpital du Midi, and a
number of special hospitals, such as the one known as La Maternité,
founded in 1795, which is at once a school for the instruction of
wet-nurses, and a maison d’accouchement, or lying-in hospital.