Alfie Evans was seven months old when he went to hospital with seizures. When more than a year later doctors said that nothing more could be done for him, his parents took the hospital to court. They lost a number of cases on the issue, and when the courts ruled he could not be moved abroad, public outrage ensued. The ancient view on such events was very different.
In 1931 a well (dated to c. 150 bc) was excavated in Athens and found to be a mass grave into which some 450 babies had been discarded. Recent analysis shows that one third had died from bacterial meningitis, an infection of the brain caused by cutting the umbilical cord with an unsterile object. Others presumably died from common conditions that were often fatal in babies, e.g. diarrhoea.
Such treatment seems to us intolerably callous.
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