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.
Three preserved human fetuses, presented in an antique display
cabinet. The first is an altogether healthy fetus, the second suffers
Polymelia, six arms, and the final, suffers a rare infection of the
Shope papilloma virus, which causes a series of horn like growths in the
forehead. These three are part of a large collection of human
specimens, afflicted with various genetic diseases.
That’s not my baby!
A “Changeling” was a creature from European folklore that
took the form of an infant. According to legends, a demon, troll, or
elf would swap a normal infant with a Changeling, leaving the parents to
discover a strange, emotionless, or disturbed hollow creature in place
of their child.
While today there are many scientific explanations to such
phenomena (autism, mental retardation, exposure to toxins, etc.) at the
time their were no rational explanations for such occurrences. To
Medieval parents Changelings were very real. Most tragically the method
of retrieving a child was to expose the Changeling, usually through
horrific form of abuse such as exposure to hot objects, leaving the
Changeling in a pile of manure at night, or near drowning. It was
thought that by exposing the Changeling to such danger, the fairies
would return the real child, not wanting their spawn to be harmed.
Religious reformer Martin Luther believed in a more drastic approach,
advocated infanticide when shown a Changeling in 1532;
“I, Dr. Martin Luther, saw and touched a changeling. It
was twelve years old, and from its eyes and the fact that it had all of
its senses, one could have thought that it was a real child. It did
nothing but eat; in fact, it ate enough for any four peasants or
threshers. It ate, shit, and pissed, and whenever someone touched it, it
cried. When bad things happened in the house, it laughed and was happy;
but when things went well, it cried. It had these two virtues. I said
to the Princes of Anhalt: “If I were the prince or the ruler here, I
would throw this child into the water–into the Molda that flows by
Dessau . I would dare commit homicidium on him!” (Weimar: Böhlau, 1912-1921)
Belief in Changelings would continue beyond the Middle Ages, even lasting in some rural communities into the 19th century.
