Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital is a charitable hospital in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It is part of the AP-HP Sorbonne University Hospital Group and a teaching hospital of Sorbonne University.
The Salpêtrière was originally a gunpowder factory (saltpeter being a constituent of gunpowder), but in 1656 at the direction of Louis XIV, it was converted into a hospice for the poor women of Paris as part of the General Hospital of Paris. This main hospice was for women who were learning disabled, mentally ill, or epileptic, as well as poor. In 1657 it was incorporated with the hospice of the Pitié designed specifically for beggars’ children and orphans. Sheets for hospice and military clothing were produced there by the children. Between 1663 and 1673, 240 of the women at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospice were sent on a mission to populate the Americas and help build New France. They were in the total number of 768 young women recruited during the ten-year period to become known as the “King’s Daughters“. The Salpêtrière was much admired for the architectural designs of Libéral Bruant with the support of Louis Le Vau. Its conversion was completed in 1669. In 1684 a women’s prison was added to the site with a total capacity of 300 convicted prostitutes. It provided wretched living conditions for its inmates.
On the eve of the Revolution, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospice had become the world’s largest hospice, with a capacity of 10,000 “patients” and over 300 prisoners. Until the French Revolution, the Salpêtrière had no medical function: the sick were sent to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
During the September massacres of 1792, the Salpêtrière was stormed on the nights of September 3/4 by a mob from the impoverished working-class district of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, with the avowed intention of releasing the detained prisoners: 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.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piti%C3%A9-Salp%C3%AAtri%C3%A8re_Hospital
