RESUMEN

At the end of the seventeenth century, the lexicographer Antoine Furetière limited the definition of nurses to those who cared for new mothers. However, in the private sphere, they cared for patients with all sorts of illnesses. It was only in 1816 that Doctor Marc proposed a precise definition of their activity. This paper examines the shift from nurses being considered as domestic healthcare workers to them being seen as skilled professionals whose role involved administering paramedical care.Because they were not part of a particular occupational community, nurses escaped the traditional categories of analysis of urban work. While the studies on health in the eighteenth century considered them to be like relations or friends of the patients, or to practice in hospitals, in the expenses lists recorded for post-mortem procedures they appear as new actors offering specific services.Nurses played a part in spreading a "culture of dependency," which was reflected in some medical texts and in some private writings by patients, making it possible to define the expectations and risks of the profession. The absence of testimonies from nurses themselves is revealing of their dependence on physicians.

RESUMEN

At the end of the seventeenth century, the lexicographer Antoine Furetière limited the definition of nurses to those who cared for new mothers. However, in the private sphere, they cared for patients with all sorts of illnesses. It was only in 1816 that Doctor Marc proposed a precise definition of their activity. This paper examines the shift from nurses being considered as domestic healthcare workers to them being seen as skilled professionals whose role involved administering paramedical care.Because they were not part of a particular occupational community, nurses escaped the traditional categories of analysis of urban work. While the studies on health in the eighteenth century considered them to be like relations or friends of the patients, or to practice in hospitals, in the expenses lists recorded for post-mortem procedures they appear as new actors offering specific services.Nurses played a part in spreading a "culture of dependency," which was reflected in some medical texts and in some private writings by patients, making it possible to define the expectations and risks of the profession. The absence of testimonies from nurses themselves is revealing of their dependence on physicians.

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RESUMEN

The phrase 'Forensic Medicine' appeared in 1777. Previously the notion was mixed up with medical science and limited to record the state of a desecrate or a dead body. Medical doctors and surgeons were in charge of writing the reports. Forensic medicine became institutionalized since 1750. The first treatise of forensic medicine was written by the chairman of Forensic Medicine at the Health School in Paris, Paul Augustin Mahon de la Houssaye about its specific methods. He contributed to create a link between medicine and law so as to let the Forensic Scientist take an active part in public health policy.

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J.-F. Bourdier was one of the doctors of the Faculty of Paris. As a medical doctor for the Archduchess Marie-Louise, he was also able to conduct his scientific research. In 1808, during the difficult time of the Continental System, J.-F. N. took part in the research work on a substitute for cinchona and tested some treatments. However, being not a chemist, he could not make any chemical analysis. Then, the chemists Caventou and Pelletier discovered quinine in 1820.

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Although the names of the 18 Century's doctors of Medicine are not unknown, no essay was really written about them and this paper tends to attract attention to the Parisian medical elite of the Ancient System. Pierre Maloet is the example of the doctor of the Monarchical system who as a doctor from Montpellier registered in the Paris Faculty at the beginning of the Century and thanks to his relations with the Guyard-Duchenne managed to be introduced into the Court and the military world. Maloets' careers are good illustrations of penetration into the society and onto the domain of the great varieties of medical exercises. Never they publicly claimed the new ideas of the Century of Enlightment but they embodied its contradictions into the attachment to old structures and the will of innovation.

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