for poor convalescents after their discharge from hospital. The establishment, called “Hospital for convalescents of Charité”, was located on the south-west corner of rue du Bac and rue de Varenne and had extensive gardens. It had its origins in a foundation created in 1628 by Angélique Faure (1593-1664) (widow of the former finance superintendent Claude de Bullion de Bonnelles), though her identity as the donor was not revealed until after her death. The Hospital for convalescents did not admit the sick, only convalescents who did not require medications and who were not infected with contagious diseases. The establishment employed no doctors, surgeons or apothecaries. Two monks and a servant (who were fed and housed according to the terms of a contract established on March 30, 1652) watched over the convalescents during their stay. Limited to fifteen days, this stay was intended to allow them to regain their strength and recover their health. It constituted an early form of follow-up care and rehabilitation. The hospital was rebuilt again in 1778-1781. In 1786 it contained 208 beds in 6 rooms and had the reputation of being the best kept hospital in Paris. The Brothers of Charity also had under their care the Charity of Charenton, a hospital and insane asylum. A detailed plan of the hospital in 1788 is included in Jacques-René Tenon’s comprehensive analysis of Parisian hospitals: Mémoire sur les hôpitaux de Paris (Memoirs on the Hospitals of Paris. In the late 18th-century, the hospital innovated in the delivery of clinical education; Louis Desbois de Rochefort (1750-1786) initiated bedside instruction for medical students that focused on the patients’ symptoms and physical signs as diagnostic indicators, marking a major development in the history of medicine in France. Rochefort was succeeded by his assistant Jean-Nicolas Corvisart in 1788, who questioned the traditional humoral theory, and employed more physical methods of diagnosis such as palpitation and percussion. During the French Revolution, La Charité temporarily took the name of hospice de l'Unité. The Brothers of Charity were forced by the Revolutionary government to abandon the hospital in 1791 (though they continued to provide medical services there until their final departure in 1801) due to the confiscation of properties of the Catholic Church. The hospital was converted into a lay establishment governed by a commission of five members. At that time, women became eligible to be treated at the hospital. A section of the hospital's gardens