Law of 1794

Following the French Revolution, France was in need of a new wave of new medical and healthcare professionals. Doctors and surgeons, primarily military-based physicians, were killed in large numbers during the wars and were in short supply to staff medical facilities after the fighting ended. In total, it was estimated that over 600 surgeons were lost during the course of the conflicts. The Revolutionary Government instituted after the war wanted a major overhaul of the French Healthcare System. With this in mind, the Legislative Assembly of 1792 disbanded most of the medical education resources in the country. Seeing the work proposed by several of his contemporaries, such as Phillipe Pinel, Xavier Bichat and Rene Laennec, who sought to combine information gathered from surgery and medical practice together, Fourcroy proposed a report that encouraged the combination of medical education and surgical education as one comprehensive teaching model to give medical students a more complete education. == Purpose ==

The report by Fourcroy, assisted in part by Francois Chaussier, was delivered to the National Convention in December 1794. Parts of the report were eventually integrated into the Law of 1794, which had several effects on the medical education system in France: • Lead to the establishment of 3 new medical schools located in Paris, Montpellier, and Strasbourg. • Integrated medical education into a hospital setting to give medical students a hands-on experience. • Combined the teachings of surgery and medicine together within the hospital for medical students. • Abolished the stratification of status between surgeons and physicians within the hospital setting and provided them with equal footing. • Ensured that a steady supply of cadavers and dissection-ready bodies were available to medical students in the hospital. • Mandated that "full-time, salaried" instructors were available in the hospitals to instruct students. • Established a national scholarship program that would allow admission into the newly established schools. Scholarship awards were delivered based upon individual performance scores on nationally regulated entry exams. ==Notes==