Prostitutes are punished for being more than twenty-four hours behind time in visiting the Dispensary; for leaving it during treatment; for insulting the physician or other authorities; for continuing to exercise their calling after being attacked by disease. The penalty is imprisonment, either in the ordinary prison or in the solitary cell. Formerly, the tread-mill was used, and in bad cases a girl's hair was cut off, and her nose slit; but these savage relics of Moorish legislation were long since abandoned. Solitary confinement is found to answer every useful purpose.[261] CHAPTER XV. BELGIUM. Hospitals and Charitable Institutions.--Foundlings.--Estimate of the Marriage Ceremony.--Regulations as to Prostitution.--Brothels.-- Sanitary Ordinances. Belgium takes a more prominent position in Europe than its mere extent would warrant. This influence is derived from the vigorous and effective stand made in behalf of rational freedom, and from the manner in which free institutions have been originated and maintained. The hospitals and other eleemosynary institutions of Belgium are of a magnificent character, supported at an annual expenditure of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Almost every town, and many of the larger villages, have hospitals for the sick, sometimes maintained at corporation expense, sometimes by private endowments. In 318 hospitals, during the four years from 1831 to 1834 (inclusive), no less than 22,180 persons were treated.[262] Foundling hospitals are a marked feature of these charitable establishments. The turning table, which was formerly in use in all such institutions, has lately been abandoned in most of them, but still remains in use at those of Brussels and Antwerp. The total number of children annually abandoned in Belgium is estimated to exceed eight thousand out of one hundred and forty-four thousand births, a ratio of about one in eighteen. The average expense attendant upon the maintenance of each infant is about seventy-two francs. Marriage in Belgium is, by law, simply a civil contract, requiring fifteen days' notice posted in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Notwithstanding the simplicity of this ceremonial, it is affirmed that an enormous extent of immorality and illegitimacy is to be met with, and that a virtuous servant-girl is altogether exceptional, there being scarcely one of them who has not an illegitimate child, while they maintain with the most unyielding confidence that, so long as the father is a _bon ami_ (sweetheart), there is no moral turpitude in the case. Belgium is remarkable for its regulations with respect to prostitution and the spread of venereal disease. The perfections of the latter arrangements are shown in the fact that, out of an army of thirty thousand men, there were less than two hundred cases of syphilis in the year 1855.