Paris hospitals around 1780, according to Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s testimony

Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) was a prolific writer, author among other things of plays and a novel, L’An 2440, published in 1771. Between 1781 and 1788, he published the twelve volumes of Tableau de Paris, a sprawling, original portrait of Paris and its inhabitants on the eve of the Revolution. Mercier’s writings also provide us with a vivid and often poignant account of the Parisian hospitals of this period, in particular the Hôtel-Dieu and the Bicêtre.