Marguerite Bottard (1822-1906), nurse under Jean-Martin Charcot, portrayed by G. Gilles de la Tourette

Abstract

Hospitals in Paris underwent considerable change at the end of the 19th century. As they moved from providing accommodation to care, their mission shifted from helping to healing. The glorification of scientific progress, as opposed to religious obscurantism, affected all of French 'Republican' society, in particular a significant part of the medical profession, led by figures such as D.M. Bourneville, former interne (house officer) under J.M. Charcot and also his publisher. Bourneville helped bring about the creation of nursing schools and the gradual replacement of religious orders by educated secular nurses. Marguerite Bottard, Charcot's chief nurse made famous by A. Brouillet's painting 'Une leçon clinique à La Salpêtrière', would be glorified and decorated as a model for this movement. A letter by G. Gilles de la Tourette to Charcot's successor F. Raymond, never before published, illustrates this progressive current of thought and revisits the struggle to secularise hospitals under the Third Republic in France. At the same time, it renews interest in the exemplary career of a nurse whose name was recently given to a building at La Salpêtrière Hospital.