- providing clothing, beds, and food, and of course the spiritual treatment that had been present since the inception of hospitals. This remained the status quo for French hospitals until the French Revolution. Hospital medicine of the French Revolution Many concepts of modern hospital medicine are considered products of social and political change of the French Revolution, arising in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Medical reform was a contentious topic of the revolutionary movement, as the French medical system met neither the needs of the population nor its practitioners. Patients described Paris' hospitals as poorhouses, noting severe overcrowding, and that only those with the means to pay could secure a personal bed. Medical professionals also sought hospital reform, as a struggle for control with the religious nurses who had traditionally staffed Parisian hospitals under management of the Catholic church. In addition to the political factors of the revolution, several practical circumstances created a unique environment for change in Paris' system of hospitals. First, Paris was the largest continental European city of the eighteenth century; there averaged six thousand poor and actually ill patients in the city's 20 hospitals at any time. Due to the lack of hospital regulation under the revolutionary government, the bodies of these patients were used for medical experimentation on an unprecedented scale. The research experiments performed by Parisian doctors on patients and cadavers led to new medical discoveries and approaches. In addition, these experiments mark the beginning of medical research being integrated with hospital medicine. Another circumstantial factor behind Paris' hospital transformation was the architecture of its hospital buildings. While the hospitals in Paris were relatively modern, in many instances the buildings required renovation and repair. Now under the guidance of medical professionals, new priorities in hospital design took precedence. A notable example was the Hôpital de la Charité, remodeled under the leadership of physician Jean-Nicolas Corvisart and several architects; changes involved removing the hospital's chapel, adding an amphitheater for clinical demonstrations, as well as dedicated rooms for surgical operation, hydrotherapy and electrotherapy. At the time, these were new features to hospital design. Changes in medical education As research became integral to the hospital system, medical education also claimed a larger role in the hospital. By 1785, the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris had established a formal training procedure, including both demonstrations and hands-on experience, and was moving away from separate fields of medicine and surgery.