The Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital ( ) is a French

teaching hospital A teaching hospital or university hospital is a hospital or medical center that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities a ...

in the 15th arrondissement of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. It is a hospital of the

Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris Greater Paris University Hospitals ( , AP-HP) is the university hospital trust operating in Paris and its surroundings. It is the largest hospital system in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It employs more than 90,000 people in 38 tea ...

group and is affiliated to the Université Paris Cité. Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital was created in 1920 by the merger of Necker Hospital (), which was founded in 1778 by

Suzanne Necker Suzanne Curchod (1737 – 6 May 1794) was a French-Swiss salonist and writer. She hosted one of the most celebrated salon (gathering), salons of the Ancien Régime. She also led the development of the Hospice de Charité, a model small hospita ...

, with the physically contiguous Sick Children's Hospital (), the oldest

children's hospital A children's hospital (CH) is a hospital that offers its services exclusively to infants, children, adolescents, and young adults from birth up to until age 18, and through age 21 and older in the United States. In certain special cases, the ...

in the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and state (polity), states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also const ...

, founded in 1801.

History

The ''Hôpital Necker'' was founded in 1778 by Madame Necker, born Suzanne Curchod, mother of

Madame de Staël Madame may refer to: * Madam, civility title or form of address for women, derived from the French * Madam (prostitution), a term for a woman who is engaged in the business of procuring prostitutes, usually the manager of a brothel * ''Madame'' ( ...

and wife of

Jacques Necker Jacques Necker (; 30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan banker and statesman who served as List of Finance Ministers of France, finance minister for Louis XVI of France, Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innov ...

Louis XVI Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; ; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (1729–1765), Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir- ...

's finance minister. Jacques Necker was a leader in the movement to reform crowded hospitals by building smaller treatment centers closer to the patients' neighborhoods. Madame Necker subsequently remodeled an old monastery into the hospital, which prior to the French Revolution was known as the Hospice de Charité. It was a Catholic institution where a baptism certificate and a confession were requirements for admission. Many poor parishioners would come to the hospital for their last rites before death. Hospitals at the time were seen as "gates to heaven" which were run by the Catholic Sisters of Charity, rather than the scientific institutions run by doctors they would later become. Male and female patients were kept separate from each other, as many hospitals of the time did. Triage procedures, established all over Paris in 1802, systematically excluded pregnant women, the mentally ill, and venereal patients. Patients were divided into four categories: fever, malignant fever, surgical, and convalescent. At the hospital, the first ever therapeutic bacteriophages were applied in the year 1919. The ''Hôpital des Enfants Malades'' (Hospital for Sick Children), not to be confused with the foundling hospital, the ''Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés'', was created by the ''Conseil général des Hospices'' (General Hospices Council) in January 1801 to help manage the health and social structures of Paris. With the aim of reorganising the hospital, the Council proposed a new classification based on the common distinction between hospitals and special hospitals and announced the creation of a hospital "for the children of both sexes under the age of fifteen years" (4 December 1801). The newly formed Hôpital des Enfants Malades opened in June 1802 on the site of the previous orphanage hospital Hôpital de l'Enfant Jésus ("Baby Jesus hospital"). It was the first paediatric hospital in the

. The two physically contiguous hospitals were merged in 1920, but the Necker division continued to care for adults and Enfants malades for children.

Mural

In 1987, American artist,

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the Graffiti in New York City, New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual l ...

, created a mural named ''

Tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

'', covering a stairwell of the hospital. He painted the mural while in Paris for the 10th anniversary exhibition of American artists at the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

. The stairwell became derelict over time and paint worn off and was condemned by hospital's administrators. However, it was conserved and fully restored in September 2017. The attached surgery center the stairwell had once attached to had been demolished and a new hospital building had been constructed. The mural now stands as a "totem" and centerpiece of the hospital gardens.

Famous Physicians

French physician

René Laennec René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec (; 17 February 1781 – 13 August 1826) was a French physician and musician. His skill at carving his own wooden flutes led him to invent the stethoscope in 1816, while working at the Hôpital Necker. ...

invented the

stethoscope The stethoscope is a medicine, medical device for auscultation, or listening to internal sounds of an animal or human body. It typically has a small disc-shaped resonator that is placed against the skin, with either one or two tubes connected t ...

in 1816 while he was working at the Hôpital Necker. Previously, doctors placed their heads directly on their patient's chest and listened for any irregular sounds to aid in diagnosis. But when a large young woman came to the hospital, he realized that this method would be less effective given her size. Instead, he used a tightly rolled up piece of paper to press against the patient's chest, which made the heartbeat much clearer than ever before. Further experimentation yielded Laennec's famous hollow wooden tube, the forerunner of today's stethoscopes. His invention's ability to magnify the internal sounds of the body advanced the medical practice of

auscultation Auscultation (based on the Latin verb ''auscultare'' "to listen") is listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a stethoscope. Auscultation is performed for the purposes of examining the circulatory system, circulatory and resp ...

, and proved beneficial to the Hôpital Necker, which had a high fatality rate for Phthisis pulmonalis. This was because Laennec discovered with his stethoscope that patients who developed the disease first displayed a particular irregularity how their voices were manifested within their bodies, thus allowing patients to be diagnosed earlier. Among eminent physicians working at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades were Auguste Chaillou, Eugène Bouchut, Director Jacques-Joseph Grancher), Director Victor Henri Hutinel, Eugène Apert and Édouard Kirmisson.

Gallery

File:Laennec memorial, Necker Hospital, Paris 1.jpg, The entrance of Hôpital des Enfants malades in Rue de Sèvres. File:Hopital_Necker_Laennec_stethoscope_2.jpg, Laennec's memorial tablet in the front of the old hospital. "Here, Laennec discovered the Stethoscope". File:Laennec memorial, Necker Hospital, Paris 3.jpg, Entrance of the historical Necker hospital ("Carré Necker").

References

External links