- Martin A. Couney
-
Dr. Martin A. Couney (1870-1954) a pioneer in neonatal care, and student of Dr.Pierre-Constant Budin has saved thousands of infants by an unorthodox method of putting incubators of prematurely born babies on display. While technically being a carnival show on Coney Island, NY, the treatment of babies was ethically sound and paid for itself. Dr. Martin Couney began his career displaying premature infants in incubators at the 1896 Berlin Exposition. Couney called his Berlin display the Kinderburtanstalt: the “child hatchery” (Silverman 1979:129) or the “baby-hatching apparatus” (Koolhaas 1994:51). Although his self-professed aim was to demonstrate scientific progress in the treatment of premature births, the display’s name took on a life of its own, becoming “celebrated in comic songs and music-hall gags in Berlin even before the Exposition opened. What had begun as a sober scientific demonstration became a crowd show that outdrew the other attractions. From the beginning, Couney’s career was situated at the intersection of medical progress, sideshow spectacle, and technical enchantment. A Berlin hospital supplied premature babies to fill the incubators; because physicians expected the babies to die, Couney was not liable for the loan of life. But the Lion incubators demonstrated their proficiency in sustaining premature life through careful control of heat, Kinderbrutanstalt 5 hygiene, and alimentation, and all of the preemies survived. A representative of the 1897 Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court invited Couney and the Lion incubators to the upcoming London fair. Success at the Berlin exhibition firmly ensconced Couney’s display in the global circuit of World’s Fairs. By the end of his career, Couney had displayed in 22 expositions (Corby 1939). In 1898, he traveled to the Omaha Trans-Mississippi Exposition, back to Europe for the 1900 Paris Exposition, and once again to America for the 1901 Buffalo fair.
He had a two year display of "Baby Incubators" at the Chicago World's Fair from 1933 to 1934. One aspect of this was researched on a 2009 episode of the PBS show called History Detectives (Season 7, Episode 4) with a tag line of "Sideshow Babies".[1] The show referenced a reunion of the 41 Chicago incubator babies and demonstrated a longer term survival rate of about 80%. A letter displayed on the show appears to be dated January 10, 1971 and states that Dr. Couney "was buried in a Mausaleum in a Jewish Cemetery on Northern Boulevard on the right side of the highway going from Brooklyn." The letter appears to go on to state that Dr. Couney was perhaps licensed as a doctor in France, but was perhaps not licensed in this Country." [United States]. The letter addresses their attempts at locating additional information about infants who were provided for the incubator displays, and the letter and show cite many satisfied patients and families who credit Dr. Couney with saving their premature babies. These exhibits may have been controversial at the time, however these public demonstrations of incubator technology brought these life saving devices to the attention of many smaller cities and hospitals.
Dr. Couney had a wife or daughter named Margaret, who may have had his remaining records. The daughter had died prior to Jan 1971. Infant Reunion, A Century of Progress. Publicity Division, Chicago, IL. July 25, 1933. NBC Nationwide Radio broadcast.
- ^ Link to History Detectives article on Sideshow Babies in Season 7, Episode 4, aired 2009 Search term Sideshow Babies
This biographical article related to medicine is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
