Hôpital de la Salpêtrière

Pitié-Salpêtrière
AP-HP
Geography
Location	Paris, France
Organisation
Care system	Public
Services
Emergency department	Yes
Beds	1,603
Links
Website	http://www.aphp.fr
Lists	Hospitals in France

The Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital (Hôpital universitaire Pitié-Salpêtrière) is a celebrated teaching hospital in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. Part of the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris and a teaching hospital of Sorbonne University, it is one of Europe's largest hospitals.

The Salpêtrière was originally a gunpowder factory ("salpêtre" being a constituent of gunpowder), but was converted to a dumping ground for the poor of Paris. It served as a prison for prostitutes, and a holding place for the mentally disabled, criminally insane, epileptics, and the poor; it was also notable for its population of rats.

In 1656, Louis XIV charged the architect Libéral Bruant to build a hospital on the location of the factory, founding the Hospice de la Salpêtrière. The building was expanded in 1684.

By the eve of the Revolution, it had become the world's largest hospital, with a capacity of 10,000 patients plus 300 prisoners, largely prostitutes swept from the streets of Paris. From La Salpêtrière they were paired with convicts and forcibly expatriated to New France.

During the September massacres of 1792, the Salpêtrière was stormed on the night of 3/4 September by a mob from the impoverished working-class district of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, with the avowed intention of releasing the detained street-girls; 134 of the prostitutes were released; twenty-five madwomen were less fortunate and were dragged, some still in their chains, into the streets and murdered.Madame Roland, a Girondin supporter of the Revolution in its first liberalising stages, recorded in her Memoirs that the Revolution "has been stained by villains and become hideous".

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Wikipedia