French medical personnel were revolutionising medicine in the 19th century. For example, René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826) conceptualised the stethoscope in 1816 and announced its science in 1819, Jean Baptiste Cruveilhier (1791–1874) contributed to an elegant understanding of pathological anatomy, and the microbiological work of Louis Pasteur (1828– 1895) established the microbial cause of infective diseases (Bernoulli, 1985).

One key reason for setting up health management facilities in its colonies by France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to offer some medical care to sailors belonging to the French military, who developed scurvy after 4–6 months of sailing. Le Service de Santé de la Marine (the Naval Health Service) established by Louis the XIV in Paris was additionally charged with the responsibility of managing the health of its military personnel in French territories.

That the European practice of health management in French territories was first established in Pondichéry (11°552 N, 79°472 E) is indeed notable. From Pondichéry, this health management practice gradually spread to other French colonies throughout the world, starting from Madagascar (Aubry and Gaüzère, 2016).

Establishing Hospitals

A ‘hospital’ based on Western-medicine, managed by the Jesuits, existed in the 1690s in the eastern-most segment of the then Pondichéry. French Jesuits, who escaped from Siam, settled in Madurai (9o 92 N; 78o 12 E), the centre of Jesuit activity in the Tamil region since the early decades of the seventeenth century.



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