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The Incubator Infants of Coney Island: How an Early 1900s Boardwalk Attraction Saved 1000’s of Untimely Infants Lives


Step proper up, people!

Shoot the Chutes!

Thrill to the Hearth and Flames present!

Trip an ele­phant!

See the Beard­ed Girl!

Ear­ly within the twentieth cen­tu­ry, crowds flocked to New York Metropolis’s Coney Island, the place gained­ders await­ed at each flip.

In 1902, the Brook­lyn Dai­ly Eagle pub­lished a couple of of the excessive­lights in retailer for vis­i­tors at Coney Island’s soon-to-open “elec­tric Eden,” Luna Park:

…probably the most impor­tant will likely be an illus­tra­tion of Jules Verne’s ‘Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Below the Sea’, which can cov­er 55,000 sq. toes of floor, and a naval spec­ta­to­ri­um, which could have a water space of 60,000 sq. toes. Beside these we could have many nov­el­ties, includ­ing the Riv­er Styx, the Whirl of the City, Shoot­ing the White Horse Rapids, the Grand Canyon, the ’49 Min­ing Camp, Drag­on Rouge, over­land and incline rail­methods, Japan­ese, Philip­pine, Irish, Eski­mo and Ger­man vil­lages, the toddler incu­ba­tor, water present and automotive­ni­val, cir­cus and hip­po­drome, Yel­low­stone Park, zoo­log­i­cal gar­dens, per­type­ing wild beasts, sea lions and seals, caves of Capri, the Flori­da Ever­glades and Mont Pelee, an elec­tric rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the vol­canic destruc­tion of St. Pierre.

Maintain up a sec…what’s this about an toddler incu­ba­tor? What sort of title is that for a curler coast­er!?

Because it seems, amid all of the exot­i­ca and bedaz­zle­ments, a construct­ing fur­nished with metal and glass cribs, warmth­ed from under by tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled scorching water pipes, was one of many boardwalk’s lead­ing attrac­tions.

Anti­sep­tic-soaked wool act­ed as a rudi­males­ta­ry air fil­ter, whereas an exhaust fan saved issues prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

The actual draw had been the pre­ma­ture infants who inhab­it­ed these cribs each sum­mer, have a tendency­ed to around the clock by a capa­ble workers of white clad nurs­es, moist nurs­es and Dr. Mar­tin Couney, the person who had the concepts to place these tiny new­borns on show…and in so doing, saved thou­sands of lives.

Couney, a breast feed­ing advo­cate who as soon as appren­ticed below the founding father of mod­ern peri­na­tal med­i­cine, obste­tri­cian Pierre-Con­stant Budin, had no license to prac­tice.

Nor did he have an md.

Ini­tial­ly paint­ed as a child-exploit­ing char­la­tan by many within the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty, he was as obscure about his again­floor as he was pas­sion­ate about his advo­ca­cy for pre­emies whose sur­vival rely­ed on sturdy inter­ven­tion.

Hav­ing pre­despatched­ed Bud­in’s Kinder­bru­tanstalt — baby hatch­ery —  to spec­ta­tors at 1896’s Nice Indus­tri­al Expo­si­tion of Berlin, and anoth­er toddler incu­ba­tor present as a part of Queen Vic­to­ria Dia­mond Jubilee Cel­e­bra­tion, he knew first­hand the pub­lic’s capac­i­ty to turn into make investments­ed within the pre­emies’ wel­fare, regardless of a gen­er­al lack of inter­est on the a part of the Amer­i­can med­ical estab­lish­ment.

Thus­ly was the thought for the board­stroll Infan­to­ri­ums hatched.

Claire Pren­tice, writer of Mir­a­cle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doc­tor Saved Thou­sands of Infants and Trans­fashioned Amer­i­can Med­i­cine, writes that “many doc­tors on the time held the view that pre­ma­ture infants had been genet­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or ‘weak­lings’ whose destiny was a mat­ter for God.”

As phrase of Couney’s Infan­to­ri­um unfold, par­ents introduced their pre­ma­ture new­borns to Coney Island, know­ing that their probabilities of discover­ing a life­sav­ing incu­ba­tor there was far better than it will be within the hos­pi­tal. And the care there could be each excessive­ly expert and free, below­writ­ten by pay­ing spec­ta­tors who noticed the oper­a­tion by way of a glass win­dow. Pren­tice notes that “Couney took in infants from all again­grounds, regard­much less of race or social class:”

… a comment­ably professional­gres­sive pol­i­cy, espe­cial­ly when he begin­ed out. He didn’t take a pen­ny from the par­ents of the infants. In 1903 it price round $15 (equiv­a­lent to round $405 right this moment) a day to look after every child; Couney cov­ered all the prices by way of the doorway charges.

The New York­er’s A. J. Liebling noticed Couney on the 1939 World’s Honest in Flush­ing, Queens, the place he had arrange in a pink-and-blue construct­ing that beck­oned vis­i­tors with an indication declar­ing “All of the World Loves a Child:”

The again­bone of Dr. Couney’s busi­ness is sup­plied by the repeaters. A repeater turns into inter­est­ed in a single child and returns at inter­vals of per week or much less to notice its progress. Repeaters attend extra assid­u­ous­ly than a lot of the sufferers’ par­ents, although the par­ents get in on go­es. After a pre­emie grad­u­ates, a chron­ic repeater picks out anoth­er one and begins watch­ing it. Dr. Couney’s prize repeater, a Coney Island girl named Cas­satt, vis­it­ed his exhib­it there as soon as per week for thir­ty-six sea­sons. Repeaters, as one may count on, are sometimes baby­much less mar­ried peo­ple, however simply as usually they’re inter­est­ed in infants as a result of they’ve so many chil­dren of their very own. “It really works each methods,” says Dr. Couney, with qui­et plea­positive.

It’s esti­mat­ed that Couney’s incu­ba­tors spared the lives of greater than 6,500 pre­ma­ture infants within the Unit­ed States, Lon­don, Paris, Mex­i­co and Brazil.

Regardless of his lack of bonafides, a num­ber of pedi­a­tri­cians who toured Couney’s infan­to­ri­ums had been impressed by what they noticed, and commenced refer­ring sufferers whose fam­i­lies couldn’t afford to pay for med­ical care. Many, as Liebling report­ed in 1939, wished his board­stroll attrac­tion might keep open 12 months spherical, “for the ben­e­match of win­ter pre­emies:”

Within the ear­ly years of the cen­tu­ry no Amer­i­can hos­pi­tal had good facil­i­ties for han­dling pre­ma­tures, and there’s no doubt that each win­ter many infants whom Dr. Couney might have saved died. Even right this moment it’s dif­fi­cult to get ade­quate look after pre­ma­ture infants in a clin­ic. Few New York hos­pi­tals have arrange spe­cial depart­ments for his or her ben­e­match, as a result of they don’t get sufficient pre­ma­ture infants to warfare­rant it; there aren’t sufficient doc­tors and nurs­es expe­ri­enced on this area to go round. Care of pre­ma­tures as pri­vate sufferers is hideous­ly expen­sive. One merchandise it includes is six dol­lars a day for moth­er’s milk, and oth­ers are rental of an incu­ba­tor and hos­pi­tal room, oxy­gen, sev­er­al vis­its a day by a physi­cian, and fif­teen dol­lars a day for 3 shifts of nurs­es. The New York hos­pi­tals are mak­ing plans now to cen­tral­ize their work with pre­ma­tures at Cor­nell Med­ical Cen­ter, and prob­a­bly could have issues orga­nized with­in a 12 months. Once they do, Dr. Couney says, he’ll retire. He’ll really feel he has “made sufficient professional­pa­gan­da for pre­emies.”

 

Lis­ten to a Sto­ryCorps inter­view with Lucille Horn, a 1920 grad­u­ate of Couney’s Coney Island incu­ba­tors under.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Examine That Made a Child Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

Why Infants in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Males: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and writer, most up-to-date­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Well-known: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Well-known Activ­i­ty Ebook. She greet­ed 2024 with thou­sands of oth­er New York­ers, tak­ing a polar bear plunge at Coney Island. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.



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