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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.84543 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Robichaud, Marc |
| Contributors | Boulle, Pierre H. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002085650, proquestno: AAINQ98360, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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