Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-11-10
Foundlings in Russia.

One of the most curious sights in St.
Petersburg is the Founding Hospital.
The name of such an institution is gener-
ally associated with rows of small boys,
whose faces have been washed and
scrubbed into a state of brilliant shini-
ness; with good little girls in the tidiest
of pinafores and %oleanest of white caps.
and with nurseries in which children of
all ages are being carefully nurtured
and tended; but all such preconceived
notions would in this case, be griev-
ously astray. The Founding Hospital
here is entirely devoted to infants Of the
tenderest age. 1t only takes them in
within Il few days of their birth, and it
sends them out to be nursed in the
country at six weeks old. Yet it con-
tains an average of nine hundred in
fants under that age. just fancy nine
hundred little morsels of humanity over
whose heads less than forty-two days of
life have passed collected in one build
ing. 1t is not difficult to obtain a per-
NIT to see it, and it we'll repays a visit
for those who are fond of tiny babies.
Perhaps some people are. After waiting
some fifteen minutes in an ante-room on
the ground floor, to which, as the door
swung to and fro, there penetrated oc-
~.casionally a feeble sound of wailing,
though certainly not of crashing Of
teeth, we were ushered into a chamber
of larger proportions, which served as q
re~ception-room for the foundlings. A
row of little cradles was ranged along
one side, and eight Of these were ten
.anted with new arrivals, who had been
washed, swathed and ticketed, but had
not passed final inspection before being
drafted into the wards upstairs. Tiny
little brats they were, evidently from
one to three days old, displaying, as the
curtains over the heads of the cradles to
keep off the flies were drawn aside,
mites of heads with blue and pink tick
cts, according to sex, on the white caps
which covered them. Standing or sit
ting round We're half a dozen stout wo-
men, each with an infant at her breast,
probably awaiting the appearance of
some official. A true lover of babies
might we'll have tarried here, although
after all it was only an earnest of what
was to come-a sort of tidbit or Swedish
smorga to whet the appetite for the
ample repast to follow. From this
ground floor a broad stone staircase led
up to the main wards, a row of large,
well ventilated, whitewased rooms open
ing out into each other and lighted and
aired by windows at either end. Each
of these wards contained about forty
beds standing out from the walls, while
the spaces between them were occupied
by small cradles, 100 to 12O in number.
Standing or sitting about, but coming
to an attitude of attention as visitors
were escorted through, were about as
many nurses as there were beds, and
they all seemed to be pretty well occu-
pied with their duties.
The bringing up of infants by the bot
tie is evidently a system not much in
favor in Russia. Whether the extreme
of Western civilization has not reached
the banks of the Neva, or a conserva-
tive clinging to primitive customs is still
too strong, certain it is that the Russian
founding draws all sustenance from the
sources provided by nature. There is,
by the way, one departure from estab-
lished custom in other parts of the
world that may be mentioned. L am
told that generally when a woman wants
10 dry and clothe her offspring after .