The Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital ( ) is a French

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

in the 15th arrondissement of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. It is a hospital of the Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris group and is affiliated to the

Université Paris Cité Paris Cité University (french: links=no, Université Paris Cité) is a public research university located in Paris, France. It was created by decree on 20 March 2019, resulting from the merger of Paris Descartes (Paris V) and Paris Diderot ...

. Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital was created in 1920 by the merger of Necker Hospital (), which was founded in 1778 by Suzanne Necker, with the physically contiguous Sick Children's Hospital (), the oldest

children's hospital A children's hospital is a hospital that offers its services exclusively to infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In certain special cases, they may also treat adults. The number of children's hospitals proliferated in the 20th ...

in the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

, founded in 1801.

History

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

Jacques Necker Jacques Necker (; 30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804) was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. Necker was a constitutional monarchi ...

, minister of

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

. 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. 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

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

. 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 New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...

, created a mural named ''

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

'', 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 Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area 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 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, and proved beneficial to the Hôpital Necker, which had a high fatality rate for

Phthisis pulmonalis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

. 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 Eugène Charles Apert (27 July 1868 – 2 February 1940) was a French pediatrician born in Paris. He received his doctorate in 1897 and afterwards was associated with the Hôtel-Dieu and Hôpital Saint-Louis. From 1919 until 1934, he worked ...

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