The drawing shows us an expert, sitting behind the patient
lying, extracting a tooth and helped by two assistants. The man on the
left pokes fire with bellows, and the other on the right, holds fire
with a grip near the “dentist”.
Charaf-ed-Din (1404-1468) left us his famous Chirurgie of
Ilkhani, an ancient dental manuscript, written and illustrated by him in
1465. This Turkish manuscript of ancient dentistry is preserved at the
BNF (National Library of France).
Many are still shocked to hear the story of how tens of
thousands of people paid to see an exhibit of tiny babies in incubators
in Long Island, New York at Coney Island in the early 19th century. But
there was a very important reason for this, one that continues to save
lives every day.
Incubators, while now standard in any hospital, were once an
untested technology. Their developers needed a way to prove their worth
and get the word out. So Dr. Martin Arthur Couney did the only thing he
could to show the world that this technology was indeed needed and could
save many lives. And that is how premature babies were put on display
at Coney Island, as the “Baby Incubator Exhibit”.
The attraction resembled a normal hospital ward, with babies,
nurses providing specialized care, and the doctor over-looking
everything. The only difference was that they were on display as a paid
exhibit. His medical staff consisted of five wet-nurses and fifteen
highly trained medical technicians including his daughter Hildegarde, a
nurse. By 1939, he had treated more than 8,000 babies and saved the
lives of over 6,500. Dr. Couney never charged parents a fee for the care
he gave their infants. His clinic was financed strictly through
entrance fees.
The exhibit on Coney Island was a spectacular, and seemingly
successful, affair. Outside of the attraction, carnival barkers,
including a very young Cary Grant, pulled people into the exhibit. The
sign over the entryway proclaimed, “All the World Loves a Baby.” Any
child who was prematurely born in the city would be rushed over to Coney
Island to be placed in the exhibit, including Couney’s own daughter,
who spent three months there.
Over time, the ‘graduates,’ of the program came back to
visit Couney and see the new crop of premature babies. In 1939 towards
the end of the attraction’s run, an article in the New Yorker mentioned
that a few of the male graduates became doctors themselves. By the time
his Luna Park exhibit closed in 1943, incubators were being used in
hospitals across the world.
