At the end of the XVIII th Century, the hospital as an establishment was at the centre of medical and political concerns. The reform of the system brough into relief the notion of public health which began first and foremost by offering assistance for the most vulnerable of subjects, children. Attention and effort focused also on the appropriate specialist treatment of certain diseases, by way of intervention in small private experimental establishment. It is in this general context that in 1780 Lenoir, the Lieutenant-general of police, founded a hospice at Vaugirard, south of Paris, to take in children and women suffering from syphilis. In the ten or so years of its existence, this was the first medical facility for this innocent form of syphilis, contracted through accidental infection. The objective of this article is to analyse the administrative, medical and social originality of this service.