A couple of days early for November 17th I thought I'd remind people of the odd contribution of New York's Coney Island to saving premature babies.
His name was Martin Couney (wiki) and he ran a sideshow at Luna Park on Coney Island in New York City from 1903 to 1943. Not perhaps a usual career option for a physician specialising in neo-natal medicine but he had his reasons.
Coney Island.
Coney Island, for those not familiar with it, was for decades a world famous amusement section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At various times it was known as "America's Playground", at others "Sodom by the Sea". It’s history as a recreation area began after the US Civil War when the beaches would attract around 30,000 people on weekends. Soon after railway links were constructed and the first elements of the famous amusement park began. In 1884 the first roller-coaster in America was built. Beyond the mechanical rides there were also restaurants, museums, concert halls, dance pavilions, sideshows, circuses, frequent fireworks displays, gambling, an aquarium, John Philip Sousa’s marching band and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Most these amusements were part of the ‘Bowery Midway’ which houses numerous games, shows, and attractions such as the Streets of Cairo, where one could ride an elephant or camel, or watch an erotic 'couchee-couchee' dance.
The ‘Gut’ section of the island’s West End became a centre for horse racing, boxing, gambling, drinking, and prostitution.
The island’s heyday was at the turn of the twentieth century when the first of several dedicated amusement parks were built. The most famous of these was Luna Park, which opened on 16MAY1903. The glare from the parks’s quarter-million electric light bulbs were the first thing seen by those approaching New York by sea, before the city’s skyline or the Statue of Liberty. At this time Coney Island routinely saw 100,000 visitors on summer Saturdays.
The region continued as a recreation centre until after WW2, when numerous factors (including a major fire at Luna Park in 1944) began it’s decline.
Couney was known as "the incubator doctor" and despite being a carnival sideshow his operation was cutting-edge for the period, employing trained nurses and wet nurses (who lived on-site) and two local physicians. At the time in the USA many doctors considered that premature babies were inferior "weaklings", treatment for which was a waste of resources. Without intervention the vast majority of infants born prematurely (>90%) would die.
Couney himself was a German-Jewish immigrant, born in 1869 in Krotoschen in Prussia, who’d studied under Pierre Budin (wiki) in Paris and followed in his footsteps.
Budin is known as the father of modern perinatology and wrote Le Nourisson, the first major medical work dedicated to neonatal care. He’d studied under Étienne Stéphane Tarnier the developer of the infant incubator and developed it further based on idea used in the poultry industry to hatch chickens.
Budin encouraged Couney to head to America to popularise their techniques, which he started doing at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. While his exhibit was immensely popular the US medical establishment refused to accept the ideas of Budin and Couney and he was shunned by many physicians, condemned as a self-publicist and charlatan.
Courney at the Buffalo exposition in 1901.
So he set up at Luna Park, financed by small loans and donations, and a 25c entry fee. He accepted any babies, regardless of race, social class or other factors, and accepted no payment from parents. The operation was paid for by the entrance fee for spectators and the occasional donation.
Yet his methods, specialised incubators imported from France (there were then none in the USA), emphasis on breast milk, dedication to hygiene and human contact with the infants, worked. Over the forty years of it's operation the 'Child Hatchery' catered to more than eight thousand infants, with a survival rate of 85%. That's about six thousand babies who'd otherwise have died. One of whom was Couney's daughter Hildegarde, born six weeks early in 1907 (Couney married one of his nurses, Annabelle Segner, in 1903). Hildegarde later trained as nurse and joined the 'family business'.
Couney stressed that his facility was a miniature hospital, not a mere sideshow attraction, and staff dressed the part; the nurses wore starched white uniforms and he and the doctors wore suits covered with white coats. The incubator facility was always scrubbed spotlessly clean. His employed wet nurses were fed a nutritious diet and banned from smoking, drinking alcohol or snacking on junk foods.
His standards were higher than most "proper" hospitals of the era.
Dr. Couney closed his facility in 1943, declaring "my work here is done", four years after Cornell University opened the first official training and research center for premature babies in the United States, though it wasn't until the 1950s that incubators were common in US hospitals.
Further reading.
Neonatology.
1933 Chicago World's Fair article.
NPR.
American Heritage.
Brief YouTube video.
His name was Martin Couney (wiki) and he ran a sideshow at Luna Park on Coney Island in New York City from 1903 to 1943. Not perhaps a usual career option for a physician specialising in neo-natal medicine but he had his reasons.
Coney Island.
Coney Island, for those not familiar with it, was for decades a world famous amusement section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At various times it was known as "America's Playground", at others "Sodom by the Sea". It’s history as a recreation area began after the US Civil War when the beaches would attract around 30,000 people on weekends. Soon after railway links were constructed and the first elements of the famous amusement park began. In 1884 the first roller-coaster in America was built. Beyond the mechanical rides there were also restaurants, museums, concert halls, dance pavilions, sideshows, circuses, frequent fireworks displays, gambling, an aquarium, John Philip Sousa’s marching band and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Most these amusements were part of the ‘Bowery Midway’ which houses numerous games, shows, and attractions such as the Streets of Cairo, where one could ride an elephant or camel, or watch an erotic 'couchee-couchee' dance.
The ‘Gut’ section of the island’s West End became a centre for horse racing, boxing, gambling, drinking, and prostitution.
The island’s heyday was at the turn of the twentieth century when the first of several dedicated amusement parks were built. The most famous of these was Luna Park, which opened on 16MAY1903. The glare from the parks’s quarter-million electric light bulbs were the first thing seen by those approaching New York by sea, before the city’s skyline or the Statue of Liberty. At this time Coney Island routinely saw 100,000 visitors on summer Saturdays.
The region continued as a recreation centre until after WW2, when numerous factors (including a major fire at Luna Park in 1944) began it’s decline.
Couney was known as "the incubator doctor" and despite being a carnival sideshow his operation was cutting-edge for the period, employing trained nurses and wet nurses (who lived on-site) and two local physicians. At the time in the USA many doctors considered that premature babies were inferior "weaklings", treatment for which was a waste of resources. Without intervention the vast majority of infants born prematurely (>90%) would die.
Couney himself was a German-Jewish immigrant, born in 1869 in Krotoschen in Prussia, who’d studied under Pierre Budin (wiki) in Paris and followed in his footsteps.
Budin is known as the father of modern perinatology and wrote Le Nourisson, the first major medical work dedicated to neonatal care. He’d studied under Étienne Stéphane Tarnier the developer of the infant incubator and developed it further based on idea used in the poultry industry to hatch chickens.
Budin encouraged Couney to head to America to popularise their techniques, which he started doing at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. While his exhibit was immensely popular the US medical establishment refused to accept the ideas of Budin and Couney and he was shunned by many physicians, condemned as a self-publicist and charlatan.
Courney at the Buffalo exposition in 1901.
So he set up at Luna Park, financed by small loans and donations, and a 25c entry fee. He accepted any babies, regardless of race, social class or other factors, and accepted no payment from parents. The operation was paid for by the entrance fee for spectators and the occasional donation.
Yet his methods, specialised incubators imported from France (there were then none in the USA), emphasis on breast milk, dedication to hygiene and human contact with the infants, worked. Over the forty years of it's operation the 'Child Hatchery' catered to more than eight thousand infants, with a survival rate of 85%. That's about six thousand babies who'd otherwise have died. One of whom was Couney's daughter Hildegarde, born six weeks early in 1907 (Couney married one of his nurses, Annabelle Segner, in 1903). Hildegarde later trained as nurse and joined the 'family business'.
Couney stressed that his facility was a miniature hospital, not a mere sideshow attraction, and staff dressed the part; the nurses wore starched white uniforms and he and the doctors wore suits covered with white coats. The incubator facility was always scrubbed spotlessly clean. His employed wet nurses were fed a nutritious diet and banned from smoking, drinking alcohol or snacking on junk foods.
His standards were higher than most "proper" hospitals of the era.
Dr. Couney closed his facility in 1943, declaring "my work here is done", four years after Cornell University opened the first official training and research center for premature babies in the United States, though it wasn't until the 1950s that incubators were common in US hospitals.
Further reading.
Neonatology.
1933 Chicago World's Fair article.
NPR.
American Heritage.
Brief YouTube video.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2f0d3jB
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