Scientific Intelligence. — Statistics. 393 



STATISTICS. 



1. Foundling Hospitals. — A prospectus has been published in 

 Paris, of a work, in three volumes, on the history of Foundling Hos- 

 pitals, on the manner in which they are conducted in all parts of the 

 world, furnishing the statistics of all the principal establishments of 

 this nature in Europe ; and on their tendency, moral, political and 

 eleemosynary, by M. De GourofF, Rector of the University of St. 

 Petersburg, Counsellor of State, &ic. : Dedicated to the Emperor 

 Nicholas. The author has travelled over the greater part of Eu- 

 rope, in the collection of materials for this work. 



" In Catholic countries," he remarks, " numerous asylums have 

 been opened to all new-born children, legitimate or illegitimate, 

 which it may please the public to abandon, or to place in them. 

 Austria has many such institutions : Spain reckons 67 ; Tuscany 12 ; 

 Belgium 18 ; but France in this respect excels other countries: she 

 has no less than 362. Protestant countries, on the contrary, have 

 suppressed the greater part of those which had been specially founded 

 for this purpose." 



To form an idea of the advantage of the Protestant system over 

 that of Catholic countries, the author states, " that in London, the pop- 

 ulation of which amounts to 1,250,000, there were in the five years 

 from 1819 to 1823, only 151 children exposed ; and that the num- 

 ber of illegitimate children received in the 44 work-houses of that 

 city, of which he visited a large number in 1825, amounted, during 

 the same period, to 4,668, or 933 per annum ; and that about one- 

 fifth of these are supported at the expense of their fathers. By a 

 striking contrast, Paris, which has but two thirds of the population of 

 London, enumerated in the same five years, 25,277 enfants trouves, 

 all supported at the expense of the state." 



To ascertain the contagious influence of these houses on the aban- 

 donment of new-born children, — Mayence had no establishment of 

 this kind, and from 1799 to 1811, there were exposed there thirty 

 children. Napoleon, who imagined that in multiplying foundling 

 hospitals, he would multiply soldiers and sailors, opened one in that 

 town on the 7th of November, 1811, which remained until March, 

 1815, when it was suppressed by the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. 

 During this period of three years and four months, the house received 

 five hundred and sixteen foundlings. Once suppressed, as the habit of 

 exposure had not become rooted in the people, order was again restor- 

 ed, and in the nine succeeding years, but seven children were exposed. 



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