Architecture et médecine à la fin du XVIIIe siècle : la ventilation des hôpitaux, de l'Encyclopédie au débat sur l'Hôtel-Dieu de Paris

Christian Cheminade: Architecture and Medecine in the Late 18th Century: Ventilation in Hospitals, from the Encyclopédie to the Debate on the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris. In the Encyclopédie articles Hôpital and Hotel-dieu we see the emergence of the idea that hospital architecture has a role to play in the healing of the sick. As putrid air was considered to be an essential factor in infection and contagion, forward-looking doctors and architects considered that it was crucial to preserve patients from it. Thus the hospitals planned after 1773 to replace the old Hôtel-Dieu in Paris were designed so as to create the maximum ventilation and isolation of the wards; that is why the traditional rectangular or cross-shaped plans were gradually abandoned. In the late 1780s a radically new hospital model was established, composed of parallel, completely separate buildings, which remained the norm for nearly a century. This reflection, encouraged and even organized by the government, shows the beginning of an enlightened policy of public health at the end of the Old Régime.Cheminade Christian. Architecture et médecine à la fin du XVIIIe siècle : la ventilation des hôpitaux, de l'Encyclopédie au débat sur l'Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie, n°14, 1993. pp. 85-109