American Hospital of Paris 1941-50

It was a tradition and thus not unusual, for medical students at Tulane in the 1940s to apply for a second year rotating internship at the American Hospital of Paris. The ‘word,’ and the tradition, was passed down. I had become a francophile living in the culture of New Orleans, as well as feeling deprived of a “liberal education” by our hurried undergraduate education during wartime. So, I interviewed already in my sophomore year and got the job, to start after completion of my education and a one-year U.S. internship.

In the delightful freedom and optimism of post-war 1949, I left New York by ship, the S.S. United States, and arrived at Le Havre on October first. My Tulane friend, later lifetime friend, Albert Sullivan met the boat train at Gare Saint Lazare and led me on a dramatic introduction to the wonders of that “City of Light!” Here are a few stories from my medical experiences in France. You are invited to the non-medical adventures in Paris included in a memoir elsewhere in this website. (Henry Blackburn)