Foundling Hospital, a public institution for the reception and support of deserted children. Some of the nations of antiquity were notorious for their disregard of the promptings of humanity in the treatment of foundlings. Their wisest legislators and philosophers considered infanticide justifiable under certain circumstances, and Lycurgus, Solon, Plato, and Numa condemned to death all weak or deformed children. But infanticide was punished by the ancient Egyptians, the guilty parent being compelled to pass three days and nights with the corpse of the child fastened to his neck. The laws of the Persians and the Jews also protected helpless children. In Thebes both child murder and exposure of children were forbidden. At Athens children were commonly exposed in the gymnasium called Cynosarges, and in Rome at the columna lactaria, a pillar which stood in one of the public market places. The state assigned foundlings as property to those who would adopt them; and those not thus adopted were educated at the public expense.

It appears that Athens and Rome had public foundling hospitals at an early period, and the appellation of is believed to have had reference to that in the Cynosarges of the former city, while Rome is supposed to have possessed an establishment of the same kind at the columna lactaria. But most foundlings were left at the mercy of those who found them. The exposure of children became so common, that the classic historians speak with admiration of the nations who abstained from it. Strabo praises the Egyptians for their humane laws, and Aelian the Thebans for their restrictive regulations on the subject; while Tacitus mentions as a circumstance deviating from the practice of the Romans, that the old Germans and the Jews considered infanticide a crime. Endeavors to restrain the cruel practice of exposing children are said to have been made in the early days of Rome; Romulus prohibited the murder of sons and of first-born daughters. But as the population increased and the public morals declined, those who had more children than they wanted exposed some of them. Ornaments and trinkets were deposited in many instances with the children, partly with a view of enticing the people to take care of them, and partly to facilitate a future identification. Imperial Rome early afforded assistance to abandoned children.

Augustus offered 2,000 sesterces to citizens who would take charge of orphans. Livia and Faustina adopted a number of deserted girls. Trajan gave alimentary pensions, and had the foundlings cared for under the name of children of the state. The first Christian emperors did not venture to punish the exposure of children, but Con-stantine inflicted the penalties of parricide upon fathers guilty of taking the life of their children, and called exposure also a kind of murder. He deprived parents of all hope of being able to recover the children, and decreed that parents who were too poor to educate their children should receive pecuniary assistance. But the practice of exposure was nevertheless continued for a long time after, and was not completely prohibited till the time of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, in the latter part of the 4th century. The emperor Justinian passed a law in 529 which declared foundlings to be free, and forbade those by whom they were received and educated to treat them and detain them as slaves. The public institutions which are believed to have existed for the reception of foundlings in Rome in the 6th century are called by Justinian brephotrophia, in imitation of the Greek institutions, but nothing is known about their regulation and organization.

Establishments for foundlings are said to have existed in the 7th century in Anjou, and about the same time at Treves, both in the Frankish dominions. The capitularies of Charlemagne refer to foundling hospitals as distinct institutions. In Milan an institution was founded about 787 by an archpriest named Dathius, to prevent infanticide. Of the prevalence of this crime he gives a very pathetic account in the letter of foundation, which has been published by Muratori. The mothers of children (mostly illegitimate) carried to this establishment strewed salt between the swaddling clothes, to denote that the infant had not been baptized. The foundlings were suckled by hired nurses, taught some handicraft, and at the age of seven discharged as free-born. This last regulation was probably made by Dathius, to guard against the custom by which the foundlings became the property of those who received and educated them, unless they were demanded back by their parents within ten days. In 1070 Olivier de la Traie founded at Montpellier a charitable order, whose members called themselves hospitalarii Sancti Spiritus, and devoted themselves to the assistance of the poor, and of foundlings and orphans.

A separate foundling hospital for 600 children, under the name of hospital of the Holy Ghost, was founded in the city in 118O by a member of that order, the count Guy of Montpellier, which was sanctioned by Pope Innocent III. in 1198. During the 13th century foundling hospitals were established at Rome, and at Eimbeck in Germany. The magnificent foundling hospital at Florence, called at present spe-dale degli innocenti, was founded about 1310; kindred institutions were established in Paris in 1302. and in. Venice in 1380. The hospital at Nuremberg, founded in 1331, had a lying-in department, and made it obligatory on the children to refund the expense of their education. The hospital of the Holy Ghost at Marseilles, founded after that in Montpellier, was the first to adopt the revolving box, by means of which the children could be conveyed into the building without any possibility of those who brought them being seen. At other places foundlings were put into marble shells at church doors.-The great hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome, on the right bank of the Tiber, near St. Peter's, contains a foundling hospital capable of accommodating more than 3,000 children. The number annually received is about 1,150. During the ten years ending in 1805, out of 11,425 received, 9,260 died.