Several Italian cities have introduced variations. In Bergamo, where a heated cradle was inaugurated in early February in a cloistered convent, an alarm sounds when a baby is placed inside it, alerting the nuns to respond and call the city’s emergency number.

The hospital in Rome is in a neighborhood that is one of the poorest in the city and home to a growing immigrant population. The neighborhood also has the city’s highest incidence of child abandonment. In the past two years, 30 deserted children — several found in garbage bins — were entrusted to the hospital’s care. Not all of them survived.

“Young immigrant women are the contemporary counterparts of 19th century servant girls impregnated by their masters,” said Grazia Passeri, who directs a project based in Rome that assists women and unwanted children. “They come here alone, they’re very fragile, and at very high risk of being seduced and cast off.”

The discovery of an infant girl on the bed of a truck in July 2005 inspired Dr. Paolillo to create the Casilino cradle, which cost about $52,000. “It was obvious that the mother of that child wanted a better life for her,” he said, noting that the baby had been bathed and wrapped in a cloth to keep her warm. “Often, there is an act of love behind abandonment.”

The problem of unwanted newborns has been documented in Italy since Roman times, when babies abandoned next to a column in a forum were either taken home by a third party to serve as slaves or left to die.

Image An orderly, Stefano Lorenzi, shows how to place an infant through a hatch into a heated crib. Credit... Tony Gentile/Reuters

Foundling wheels were institutionalized by a papal bull issued in the 12th century by Pope Innocent III, who was shocked by the number of dead babies found in the Tiber. By 1204, there was a wheel in operation at the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome, next to the Vatican. A 14th-century home for abandoned children in Naples, annexed to a church, is now a museum about foundlings. Many common family names in Italy can be traced to a foundling past: Esposito (because children were sometimes “exposed” on the steps of a convent), Proietti (from the Latin proicio, to throw away) or Innocenti (as in innocent of their father’s sin).