Establishing Medical Men at the Paris Hôtel-Dieu, 1500–1715

Summary

This article examines the creation of a staff of professional medical practitioners, physicians and surgeons at the Paris Hôtel-Dieu between 1500 and 1715. Influenced by late eighteenth-century critics, the traditional historiography of the hospital has viewed the institution in a negative light. Historians have assumed that the early modern Hôtel-Dieu was primarily a place for housing the sick, focusing on religious rather than medical care. The article argues that this picture is incorrect. Following the secularisation of the hospital's board of directors at the turn of the sixteenth century, a large staff of physicians and surgeons was built up in the years before 1715.

Hôtel-Dieu, Paris, physicians, surgeons, administration, directors