This address traces the emergence of the hospital in the 18th century as a facility for combating disease and tending to the sick. Reference is made to the reports of Tenon and Howard on hospitals in several European countries, which instead of considering the hospital as a mere architectural object make recommendations based on the numbers of beds of an institution, its usable space, the dimensions of wards, mortaility rates, etc.; the result is a new functional concept of the medical and physical organization of the hospital. The author delves into the characteristics of the hospital and medical practice in the Middle Ages, the 17th and 18th centuries, and since the middle of the 18th. He brings out the direct relationship of hospital organization to the economic regulations that emerged with mercantilism. He stresses the importance of man for social and military development on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the application of a technology that could be described as political: the discipline. He is of the view that the introduction of disciplinary mechanisms in the confused environment of the hospital permitted its "medicalization" and the development of the medical-therapeutic hospital.