The former Louis Martin Pavilion

The PLM of Rouen hospitals has no link with the railway company from Paris to Lyon and to the Mediterranean. In the early 1930s, Rouen hospital administrators decided to build a new building to isolate contagious patients. To design this isolation and replacement pavilion at the General Hospital, they called upon the advice of Dr Louis Martin, director of the Pasteur Institute of Paris and a specialist in hospital hygiene. It is his name that will be given to the pavilion that was put into service on January 1,1935 and which will keep the name of Pavillon Louis Martin or PLM until its demolition.

This new masonry building was built in the shape of a "U", recalling the layout of the plague hospitals of the 17th century. It had one hundred hospital beds spread over two floors, reserved for the reception of patients suffering from "epidemic and communicable diseases. "Everything was designed to be easily cleaned and disinfected. Almost all the rooms had only one bed. They were separated from the central corridor by glass partitions. Arrangements had even been made to ensure that no outsiders enter the pavilion. In order to allow the families of the patients to visit them without risk of contamination, outside balconies had been installed, with the patients visible through the windows.

This first infectious disease service was especially marked by the poliomyelitis epidemic that began in 1945. This is how the PLM took in the many victims of this disease and saw the development of the respiratory resuscitation that was essential to alleviate its most severe forms with the use of the first "iron lungs".

These resuscitation and infectious disease departments moved in 1975 to the brand new Félix-Dévé Pavilion and the PLM was then demolished to make way for the central ring inaugurated in 1981.

A wing of the PLM also housed Professor Lemercier's pneumo-phtisiology (tuberculosis) department for more than ten years before its installation at Bois-Guillaume Hospital in 1965.