“Sons of the vice”. The Problem of the Foundling and the Construction of the Modern Foundling Asylum in Spain

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century the high mortality rates of foundling, highlighted the need to undertake a series of reforms aimed to improve the sanitary conditions in the foundling asylums and to implement measures for the maternity support. Accordingly, Spanish doctors raised a draft medicalization of the Foundling, whose implementation was seriously marked by the weight of the old prejudice that valued the foundling child as “son of vice”, privileging a reform model in which the care of the moral conditions of children continued to be a priority with respect to obtaining material assistance.

Keywords

• Expósitos
• moral
• herencia
• degeneración
• inclusa
• medicina
• caridad
• religión.