Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital

Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital is a French teaching hospital in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, operated by the Assistance Publique - Hopitaux de Paris group and affiliated with Paris Cite University, with roughly six hundred beds and an emergency department, specializing primarily in pediatrics. It was formed in 1920 through the merger of two older institutions, Necker Hospital, founded in 1778 by Suzanne Necker, and the Hopital des Enfants Malades, founded in 1801 and considered the oldest children's hospital in the Western world, with the Necker division continuing to serve adults and the Enfants Malades division focusing on pediatric care after the merger. The hospital is historically notable as the site where physician Rene Laennec invented the stethoscope in 1816, a development that transformed medical diagnosis through auscultation.