I’d never imagined that someone would have to come up with a way to make it safer for a parent to abandon a child.

Until I read this article in the International Herald Tribune I’d never even heard of a foundling wheel.

In the Middle Ages, new mothers in Rome could abandon their unwanted babies in a “foundling wheel” — a revolving wooden barrel lodged in a wall, often in a convent, that allowed women to deposit their offspring without being seen.

Now a Rome hospital, the Casilino Polyclinic, has introduced a technologically advanced version of the foundling wheel, and for the first time, a new mother left her baby there Saturday night. Full Story.