A thorough analysis of the problem of foundling children from a social, medical, legal and historical standpoint. The work begins with a history of the treatment of abandoned children from antiquity to the time of writing; this is followed by accounts of the various laws and institutions established for handling abandoned children in France and other countries. An entire section of the book discusses foundling hospitals, including the benefits and drawbacks of their operations; elsewhere, the authors describe the training of foundling children for employment in the military and in the French colonies. The book finishes with numerous tables giving statistics of births, exposures and deaths of foundling children in France, as well as monies expended on foundlings and the transfer of children in and out of foundling hospitals. Pp. 479-94 contains a bibliography of the principal works on foundling children published to the time of writing. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.