"There was a time when the lives of the most disadvantaged children was worth almost nothing."

In Lost Childhoods, Juan Casado, emeritus pediatrician at the Hospital del Niño Jesús in Madrid, recounts the hardships faced by the most vulnerable children, often left to fend for themselves or in hospices. There, hunger and cold, combined with overcrowding, meant that three out of every four newborns admitted to these centers died before reaching their first birthday.

This tribute to that mistreated childhood addresses the Royal Philanthropic Smallpox Vaccination Expedition (which took children from the La Coruña orphanage to the Americas), the founding of the Hospital del Niño Jesús in Madrid by the Duchess of Santoña (the first children's hospital for poor children in Spain, which also served as an orphanage), and the theft of newborns in the 1950s.

The book particularly highlights the role of women in the survival of these children; thanks to their efforts, thousands of children who had been given up for dead managed to survive. Their work has all too often been forgotten, if not outright silenced.

Juan Casado has been a pediatrician for half a century and is also a writer. He has published numerous research articles in scientific journals specializing in childhood diseases and more than twenty books on the same subject. He has given lectures and taught courses in Spain and in North and South America. Thousands of sick children have passed through his hands, whom he has cured or comforted when a cure was not possible. Many have left him with vivid memories; others, painful images; all of them, unforgettable stories.