Making hospitals "worthy of their purpose" : hospitals and the hospital reform movement in the généralité of Rouen (1774-1794)

• Main Author: Robichaud, Marc
• Other Authors: Boulle, Pierre H. (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2003
• Subjects: Health care reform > France > Rouen > History > 18th century; Hospitals > France > Rouen > History > 18th century
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84543

The eighteenth century was a period ripe with challenges for hospitals in France. Denounced as ineffective, inefficient and even inhumane institutions, hospitals found themselves at the centre of a growing debate over the administration of health care and welfare. Although dismissing the hospital's traditional role as a refuge for the poor, the indigent and the sick, many reformers believed that this institution still could play a valuable social role. Thus, while contemporaries lashed out against the large, "abuse-ridden," hopitaux generaux and hotels-Dieu , small hospitals were seen in a more favourable light. For the growing number of contemporaries who argued that hospitalisation should be reserved exclusively for the sick, hospitals containing a small number of beds were promoted as better disposed and better equipped to meeting the health-care needs of the community. At the same time, contemporaries began calling for the decentralization of health care and welfare services. Instead of focusing these services in large regional poor-relief institutions, reformers argued that the poor and the sick would be better served by receiving assistance in their own community, either in small parish hospitals, or within their own home (secours a domicile). === This dissertation examines how hospitals and hospital services in the late eighteenth-century generalite of Rouen responded to this growing hospital reform movement. It shows that many of the policies adopted by the region's hospital administrators reflected the contents of the larger "national" debate on health care and welfare reform. More importantly, the military was behind many of the changes affecting hospital services in this region During the eighteenth century, military hospitals became a model to emulate towards making the "reformed" hospital a reality. However, imposing military-style health standards on the region's civilian hospitals proved to be a complicated process, one that often involved a great deal of negotiation and compromise.