Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital

The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is a hospital in Paris. 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. Eventually 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 famous population of rats.

During the French Revolutionary period, it was stormed by the mob and the prostitutes released, but others (probably madwomen) were less fortunate and were murdered.

One of its most famous professors, Jean-Martin Charcot, is often credited as the founder of modern neurology. His teaching activities on the Salpêtrière's wards helped to elucidate the natural history and pathophysiology of many human illnesses including neurosyphilis, epilepsy, and stroke.

La Salpêtrière is now a general teaching hospital with departments focusing on most major medical specialities.

Diana, Princess of Wales died in the Salpêtrière, as well as Josephine Baker.

Hospital Chapel
Chapelle de la Salpêtrière (Hospital Chapel), at n° 47 Boulevard de l'Hôpital is one of the masterpieces of Libéral Bruant, architect of les Invalides. It was built around 1675, on the model of a Greek cross and has 4 central chapels each capable of holding a congregation of some 1,000 people. It has a central octagonal cupola illuminated by picture windows in circular arcs.

Philippe Pinel monument
In the place in front of the main entrance to the Hospital, there is a big bronze monument to Philippe Pinel, who was chief physician of the Hospice from 1795 to his death in 1826. The Salpêtrière was, at the time, like a large village, with seven thousand elderly indigent and ailing women, an entrenched bureaucracy, a teeming market and huge infirmaries. Pinel created an inoculation clinic in his service at the Salpêtrière in 1799 and the first vaccination in Paris was given there in April 1800.