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[{205}] 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.
THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL.
FONT AT 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[{206}] 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.
HÔPITAL DE LA PITIÉ.