[1] During his studies, Tenon earned the favour of Jacques-Bénigne Winslow,[2] a renowned doctor who taught at the Jardin du Roi, and thanks to whom he was able to deepen and use his medical knowledge.

In response to this mandate, the Academy empanelled a special hospital committee, whose members were Tenon and other renowned scientists.

[3] Elected deputy for Seine-et-Oise in the Legislative Assembly in 1791, Tenon was appointed first president of the Committee for Public Relief, and commissioned a major survey of hospitals in 1791.

This study documented with some precision the number and capabilities of healthcare establishments throughout the Republic, something the Monarchy had never managed to do under the Ancien Regime.

[6] Despite his election to the Institut de France in 1795, and despite Bonaparte’s pressing demands, he refused to renew his involvement in public life.

At his burial, Baron Percy, surgeon and Inspector General of the Armies, delivered a eulogy, saying: ‘He knew no other goal than making himself useful for others.”[1] He was buried in Division 10 of the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Public outrage at the loss of life sparked more systematic discussions of possible reforms to the hospital system in Paris.

[8] In 1785, thirteen years after the 1772 fire, the project of the architect Bernard Poyet (1742-1824) was presented in a memoir entitled "On the need to transfer and rebuild the Hôtel-Dieu," written by Claude Coquéau (1755-1794).

The Baron de Breteuil (1730-1807), acting for Louis XVI, instructed the Royal Academy of Sciences to evaluate the Poyet project.

Furthermore, by order of Louis XVI, Tenon and Coulomb carried out an official study mission to England in the summer of 1787.

During a stay lasting 11 weeks, Tenon visited 52 hospitals, prisons and workhouses and collected numerous statistics and detailed notes on practice.

[2] The outbreak of the French Revolution radically altered the political and institutional landscape in which the commission's work was evolving, though it remained influential.

The memoir contains 5 chapters:[3][6]:5-7 For Tenon, the hospital was the "conscience of a civilisation whose worth ... would be measured not by articles of faith and lofty doctrine, but by the way it nurtured life, succoured distress, righted injustice and transformed misery, frailty and want into hope, dignity and sufficiency.

Since "the preservation of life and maintenance of good health were indispensable to national strength, prosperity and social order ... it was the government's responsibility to manage hospitals in the public interest.

Virtually everything is criticized: the space, the circulation, the arrangement of the beds, the number and the mixing of the sick, the dirtiness, the rot and the bad smells, inhumanity and mortality.

[6]8-9 The reception of the Mémoire was positive and it raised Tenon's stature from one of a relatively obscure professor at the Paris College of Surgery to that of a respected thinker on hospital reform.

On the other hand, contrary to Tenon's recommendation, the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris was finally rebuilt by Baron Haussman in 1877 as a large central hospital very close to its former location next to Notre Dame.