🌡️💊//17th-century hospital

Type of facility: General hospital (not a clinic). It's a shelter, almshouse, workhouse, and isolation facility all under one roof. There's no treatment in the modern sense.
Founded: 1656, by decree of Louis XIV. The building is a former 13th-century castle south of Paris.
Who it houses: the mentally ill, the disabled, orphans, the elderly, vagrants, epileptics, venereal patients, and former prisoners. There is no distinction based on diagnosis. Men are housed in Bicêtre, women in Salpêtrière.
Conditions:

• Crowding: 8-13 people on one straw bed.
• There's often no heating. Lice, rats, unsanitary conditions.
• There are few staff. The nurses are poorly educated women; cruelty and beatings are common.
• The "violent" ones are kept in chains in separate cells.
• Underground punishment cells: no light, no air, detention periods of months and years.
  The role of doctors is formal. Rounds are infrequent. Treatment consists of bloodletting, emetics, laxatives, and prayer. The diagnosis of "insanity" is arbitrary; discharge is almost impossible.
  Hierarchy:
• The manager (director) has complete power and decides the fate of everyone.
• The senior doctor prescribes procedures, but has almost no influence on everyday life.
• Nurses and attendants are the actual owners of the wards.
• Chaplain - confession, communion, funeral service.
  The key logic of the place: not treatment, but isolation from society of all who interfere, frighten, or cannot take care of themselves.

Head of Department - Pierre Duval, 54 years old
A former clerk who rose through the ranks at court through connections and clerical acumen. Appointed manager of Bicêtre fifteen years ago—a position he earned not for his mercifulness, but for his ability to balance accounts and maintain order. A cold, methodical man, always wearing a clean doublet, which seems almost sacrilegious amid this filth. He doesn't consider the sick human beings, but he doesn't hate them either—he simply sees them as nothing more than expense items. He makes decisions single-handedly: who gets sent to solitary confinement, who gets transferred, who gets written off. He takes bribes, but discreetly. He fears only one thing—an inspection from Paris, so once a year he puts on a show: the wards are cleaned, the chained ones are brought out into the open, the dead are buried according to the list. The rest of the time, he lives in the master's house at the hospital, eats his fill, drinks good wine, and doesn't visit the sick unless necessary.

The Old Doctor - Guillaume Renard, 67 years old
Gray-haired, heavyset, with a heavy gaze. Thirty years in Bicêtre: he came as a young physician under Cardinal Mazarin, and now he himself is as decrepit as the walls. He lost faith in healing long ago—he's seen too many deaths to delude himself. He treats with bloodletting, emetics, and prayer, although his faith in God is dwindling. He treats the sick with a weary condescension: he's not brutal, but he offers no comfort either. Behind their backs, he calls his nurses "morning women." He secretly writes a notebook of observations—he describes madness as a brain disease, not demonic possession, but he's afraid to show it: the church doesn't tolerate such thoughts. He drinks. In the evenings, he sits in his little room, listening to the rats scratching in the walls, and thinks about how Bicêtre won't let him go—he himself has been locked here for a long time.

Young Doctor - Jean Morel, 26 years old
Thin, quick, with nervous hands and eyes inflamed from lack of sleep. He recently graduated from the medical faculty of Montpellier, where he devoured the works of innovators. Assigned to Bicêtre as punishment for his daring dissertation on the nature of melancholy. He is stunned by what he sees: people in chains, in filth, without care. He rushes to help, argues with his superior, demands private rooms and clean linens. They laugh at him. However, he does not give in: at night, he secretly makes the rounds of the "unruly" prisoners, tries to get them to talk, and takes notes. Inside, there is a mixture of fear and the rapture of a pioneer. Naive, impetuous, unaware that the system is stronger than him. But he is the first to notice: one of the "unruly" prisoners is silent not from madness, but from fear.

Senior caregiver: Margot Brun, 49
A peasant woman from Normandy, a widow who lost her husband and three children to fever. Twenty years in Bicêtre. Tough, strong, with heavy hands and a voice that silences entire wards. Mistress of "her" patients: she decides who gets food, who lies by the window, who gets chained. Not malicious, but burnt out. Pity died with the children; only a stubborn rule remains: feed them if there's anything to eat, and don't let them die on dirty straw without at least a sip of water. She keeps the attendants in fear: for cruelty to the sick, she can strike them on the back without her knowledge. She doesn't listen to the doctors, but she doesn't openly contradict them either—she simply does things her way.

Chaplain - Abbé Julien Fauré, 38 years old
A thin, pale, and perpetually coughing priest, sent to Bicêtre for some obscure offense in the diocese—either arguing with the rector or reading too much. He believes sincerely, but his faith is quiet and haggard: he confesses those who can't form a word and performs funeral services for those whose names no one remembers. He administers Communion on the move, crossing his forehead with a dirty rag. He treats the sick without fear or disdain—he's the only one who sits next to them on the straw. He doesn't discuss his medical work, but in the notes he keeps for the diocese, one can read between the lines: souls aren't saved here, they're buried alive. He drinks rarely, prays a lot, and sleeps for three hours.