The Parent Institution:
The American Hospital of Paris

 

The establishment of a legal basis for a foreign hospital in Paris and the raising of funds to make it happen was a slow process lasting from 1904 to early 1910. The American Hospital of Paris---not actually located in Paris, but in the western suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine---also had a legal existence in the United States, incorporated in the State of New York.

The ruling authority for the Hospital was its Board of Governors. The hospital director was appointed by and answered to this board.

The American Hospital would be the legal and administrative vehicle through which the temporary wartime activities of its offshoot, the Ambulance (and its Field Service), could take place.

A few words about the hospital's background: In 1910 Mr. J. Harjes, Sr., a co-founder of the Bank of Morgan, Dr. Mangin, a leading American physician, and a number of other influential Americans proposed the establishment of a hospital in Paris to meet the needs of the growing American colony. In 1913, a year before the beginning of the First World War, this group induced the United States Congress to grant a charter for it. At the outbreak of the conflict, Myron C. Herrick, our ambassador to France, proposed that the American Hospital be transformed into a military medical base to serve the Allied armies. The French Government turned over to the Americans the Pasteur High School building in Neuilly (which was larger than the original establishment). Donations came in from the United States, and outstanding American doctors --- Blake, Cushing, Crile --- offered their services. The hospital was the first medical institution in France to incorporate a dental department, whose restoration of the jaws of wounded soldiers was a pioneer achievement in plastic surgery.

When the German Army of von Kluck bore down on Paris in the fall of 1914, the hospital purchased a fleet of Ford chassis, mounted ambulance bodies on them, and transported the wounded from the front. According to Ambassador Herrick's testimony, there were no more useful ambulances at the front than these Fords, which could penetrate practically anywhere. Indeed, the story of American Hospital ambulances is as stirring in its fashion as the saga of General Gallieni's emergency taxis which rushed reinforcements to save the Allies at the Marne.

The American Hospital became famous among the soldiers. British tommies and French poilus went into battle with messages in their pockets begging to be sent there if they were hit. People from every walk of life did volunteer work in its wards. Dr. George Crile, who joined the staff, writes that one orderly in his operating room was a grand-opera singer, another was a portrait painter, and still another was a member of a well-known banking firm. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt worked as a nurse.

Dr. Charles F. Bove with Dana Lee Thomas. A Paris Surgeon's Story. Boston: Little, Brown. 1956, pp 29-30

 

The Founding of the American Hospital of Paris

 

Already the center of the medical world during the century of the Enlightenment, France, by the end of the 19th century, was on the leading edge of medicine, as a consequence of the work of such scientists as Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) and Pierre (1859-1906) and Marie (1867-1934) Curie. Nonetheless, the benefits of medical progress were not always available to visiting foreigners or to resident foreigners lacking financial resources.

In Paris, foreigners, either isolated or badly informed, were involuntarily kept apart from such progress. Many of these were Americans --- students, tourists, travellers, residents - --who were living from day to day from small savings or tiny incomes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, and at the high point of the summer months, there were as many as one hundred thousand Americans in Paris. Many lived in more or less comfortable, more or less sanitary, hotel rooms. And as might concern health needs, the American government had made no provisions for its citizens in France. There was no medical protection in case of illness. In the best of cases, sick Americans appealed to charitable organizations, but many tried to take care of themselves on their own. . . an endeavor which, at the time, often gave rise to veritable dramas.

Nicole Fouché "Les premiers pas, 1900-1914", Le mouvement perpétuel, histoire de l'Hôpital américain de Paris 1906-1989, Toulouse: Erès, 1992.

Thus it was that, in 1904, two members of the American Colony of Paris, Dr. A. J. Magnin and his friend, Harry Van Bergen, conceived of founding an American Hospital. In 1906, their project began to materialize with the support of influential members of the Colony. At this time, no one could have been ignorant of the legacy of the first American Ambulance and most were familiar with the charitable work of the church dispensaries. The Church of the Holy Trinity sponsored a dispensary for American students in Paris and, from 1881 to 1883, the American Church had run a Medical Mission.

In September 1881 a Medical Mission was opened at 59 Rue Letellier, Grenelle, with Dr. Henry R. Darcus in charge. His staff consisted of a visiting evangelist and voluntary workers. Dr. Darcus had a free dispensary twice a week, prescribing for three or four hundred cases monthly.

Joseph W. Cochran, Friendly Adventurers, Brentanos, Paris, 1931

The Students' and Artists' Center had its beginnings in the year 1890, when Whitelaw Reid was America's last Minister to France, just before the establishment of the Embassy. It came into being through Mrs. Reid's wish to assist her young compatriots studying in Paris. She bought property running between the Rue de Chevreuse and the Rue de la Grande Chaumière and converted the house - a fine old building which dated back to the time of Louis XIII - into a Hostel and Club for the use of American women students and artists. She also gave permission to the Rector of Holy Trinity, Dr. Morgan, to erect in the grounds the little chapel of St Luke's-in-the-Garden, affectionately known by generations of students as the Little Tin Church. At the same time, Dr Morgan founded the neighboring Holy Trinity Lodge, with its Student's Clinic and Hospital, the Lodge being under the direction of Deaconess J. Carryl Smith, and the Clinic presided over by Dr. Crosby Whitman. In those long-ago days, before there was any American Hospital at Neuilly, one can easily realize how enormously valuable such a Clinic was to students in a foreign country, many of them of very slender means.

W. S. Scott, A Crusading Dean, Herald Farnham 1967, p. 61

In 1907, on the eve of their national holiday, the board members of the American Hospital Association of Paris finally took action in buying a piece of property (including a building and out-buildings) in the western Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Two years later, the transformation of the main building into a hospital would be complete.

The founders' idea was not to make a profit. On the contrary, theirs was an act of benevolence: the gift to Americans in France - in Europe, in fact - who might so desire, whatever their revenue, of the benefit of the latest developments in medicine and science, and free of charge if necessary. To finance their undertaking, they decided to appeal, in the United States and in France, to the legendary generosity of the American people.

Nicole Fouché, "Les premiers pas, 1900-1914", Le mouvement perpétuel, histoire de l'Hôpital américain de Paris 1906-1989, Toulouse: Erès, 1992.

In September 1909, the Hospital was ready. On October 28th, Henry White, American ambassador to France, Gaston Doumergue, French Minister of Public Instruction [future President of the Republic] and a certain number of representatives of the American medical corps and society, witnessed the inauguration of the Hospital. The project of Van Bergen and Magnin had proved to be an magnificent success.

ibid., p. 22

In 1910 Mr. J. Harjes, Sr., a co-founder of the Bank of Morgan, Dr. Mangin, a leading American physician, and a number of other influential Americans proposed the establishment of a hospital in Paris to meet the needs of the growing American colony. In 1913, a year before the beginning of the First World War, this group induced the United States Congress to grant a charter for it.

Charles Bove with Dana Thomas. A Paris Surgeon's Story. New York, 1956.

But there was a last-minute delay --- the dramatic floods of January ---so it was not until March 30, 1910 that the American Hospital of Paris, rue Chauveau in Neuilly-sur-Seine, was finally able to open its doors to its first patient.

 

Note:

"In fact, at the end of the 19th century, the number of Americans in Paris---the Colony, the students on the Left Bank and massive influxes of tourists---sometimes reached 100,000 during the high season. French hospitals were not always easy of access to foreigners and the American dispensaries were not able to accommodate the needs of such a population. The Colony thus launched the American Hospital of Paris which finally opened its doors in 1910, on Rue Chauveau, in Neuilly-sur-Seine."

Alan Albright. "American Volunteerism in France. The Development of Relief Work, in and out of War." Blérancourt Exhibition Catalog, 1993.