Hospital accounts and accounting systems: a study in the French region of Toulouse from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century

Private charity was the origin of the foundation of hospitals in prerevolutionary France and at the same time their principal source of income; the church played an important role. The Revolution introduced many changes to hospitals. This article has two objectives: to describe hospital organization and accounting practices between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries as seen in three hospitals in the Toulouse region, and to show how the accounting model adopted was suited to their structure and aims.