[The death of foundlings, a drama in two acts]

Around 1750 society grows aware of the high mortality of abandoned infants: enlightened physicians and administrators attempt to remedy this disaster and put the blame on the country wet nurses who took in the foundlings. A large number of contemporary historians have incritically contented themselves with repeating these reproaches. This article constitutes an attempt to rehabilitate country wet nurses. According to the authors, the infants were victims of the circumstances of being abandoned. An analysis based on a list of names does show that the most obvious causes for the high mortality rate of the foundlings were the close incidents surrounding the fact of being abandoned whereas it can rarely be explained by the living conditions at a wet nurse's. In the background, an original rural society emerges in a poor country taking in infants constitutes a real business. This study represents but one stage at the core of a developing research.