"Enriching the Hospital's Scientific Fame": Research at the Vienna Foundling Hospital

Little is known about medical research at the Vienna Foundling Hospital during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The present article focuses on nutrition, medical care, and research concerning newborn infants. In 1784, Emperor Joseph II merged obstetric and foundling hospitals under common leadership with specific statutes. Admissions rose from 1,704 in 1785 to 9,797 in 1859. A third of all infants born in Vienna in the 1890s were "foundlings" - correctly: abandoned infants, illegitimate birth was a prerequisite for admission. Differing from other foundling hospitals, the statutes obliged physicians to research, which focused on the great baby killers of the 18th century: smallpox, puerperal sepsis, connatal syphilis, tuberculosis, and malformations. Researchers included Anton Rechberger, Lucas Boër, Ignaz Semmelweis, Carl Rokitansky, Alois Bednar, and Carl Friedinger. Major scientific achievements were Rechberger's introduction of smallpox inoculation in Austria in 1768; Semmelweis' prevention of puerperal sepsis in 1847, and Bednar's classification of congenital heart malformations in 1852. Mortality statistics were doctored: deaths within 1 year were related to admissions from several years, which yielded maximum "mortality rates" of 76% in 1811, and a minimum rate of 13% in 1829. Actual mortality, however, per number of admissions, was over 90% in the first year of life. The institution persisted for 126 years because of the strict anonymity of extramarital birth, faked statistics deceiving supervisors, and esteem for the imperial inaugurator even beyond the end of the Austrian Empire.

Despite appalling mortality, successful research was conducted at the Vienna Foundling Hospital.