FOUNDLINGS, ORPHANS, AND DESERTED CHILDREN.
Many towns have hospitals for foundlings. Their parents may remain perfectly unknown; they have only to deposit the child at night in a wheel which in all these hospitals communicates with the street and with the interior of the house, ring a bell to warn the person on the watch, and go away. The wheel turns, the child is received into the hospital, and numbered, and no further trace remains of the transaction.
Genoa possesses a splendid orphan establishment; and there is one in Turin for girls only. But they are far from being sufficient for this numerous and interesting class. There is no further public assistance for orphans and deserted children; they are thrown on private charity.
There is no establishment for persons maimed or deformed. Even in the surgical hospitals, as soon as a patient no longer requires the assistance of art, he is dismissed, even if he should have lost the use of his limbs.
In Genoa there is an establishment for the deaf and dumb, which enjoys a well-founded celebrity. On certain conditions poor children are gratuitously admitted. There is no institution for the blind, or any further public relief for any of the classes in question: they are left to private charity.
There are two large establishments for the insane, one at Turin, the other at Genoa. In each a small payment is made, in respect of the lunatic, either out of his own property, or, if he has none, by his parish or province. In some rare cases insane persons are received gratuitously.
Some mountain districts, and particularly in the valley of Aoste, contain many of the idiots, commonly called Cretins. They are in general gentle and inoffensive, and the objects of the pity and zealous assistance of all around them, so much so that it is never necessary to place them in an hospital. The interesting popular belief that a special protection of heaven is attached to the house inhabited by a Cretin is well known.
It is not to the encouragement given by public charity that the great number of premature and improvident marriages contracted in this country is to be imputed. With the exception of those between professional beggars, we owe the greater part of them, first, to the natural disposition of ignorant and rude persons to follow, without reflection, the passions of the moment, and, secondly, to the blind zeal with which the clergy and bigotted people encourage all kinds of marriages, with the erroneous idea of thus preventing the immorality and scandal of illegitimate connexions. Nor are family ties affected by the charitable institutions. Whatever those may be, the poor man ever considers his relations as his sole support against adversity. Besides, as the Roman law with respect to paternal authority has been preserved among us unimpaired, family union is more easy and common than anywhere else.