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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Return of the 'Foundling Wheel'


Hospital of the Innocents, Florence


Zadok reports on a recent article in The Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/26/witaly126.xml.

"A Rome hospital that reintroduced a modern version of the medieval foundling wheel, following a spate of abandoned babies, has had its first "deposit".

The device allows women to leave their new-born children in hospital instead of abandoning them in telephone boxes or on doorsteps or, in an extreme case, killing them.

The original wheels were a cylindrical hatch set in the outside wall of a church. Mothers would place their baby in the hatch, close it and then ring a bell to warn the priest or nuns.
The system has been brought up to date with a heated soft bed complete with sensors and cameras to alert staff when a baby has been abandoned.

The wheel, installed at the Policlinico Casilino last year, was used for the first time late on Saturday night, when a three-month-old boy was left there.

The 14lb boy was named Stefano after the doctor who first treated him."

Now, what else can we re-discover from History that`s been thrown away as a result of a belief in Progress ?

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