The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

by Dawn Raffel

  And then there was.

  THE CENTURY OF PROGRESS

  Chicago, 1933

  On May 27, 1933, light that had traveled across the universe from the red giant star Arcturus kindled a brilliant Deco city. The starlight had supposedly started its journey in 1893,* the year of the Chicago Columbian Exposition. In an act of magical planning, the minds behind Chicago’s second world’s fair built the Adler Planetarium, and used it, along with three other planetariums across the country, to capture the star’s rays, converting them into electrical power.

  Then they threw the switch.

  * * *

  —

  The year 1933 was the bottom of the Depression. Violent storms of dust choked the plains. Gangsters bloodied the cities. Pantries were bare and the news was bleak. On January 30, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. On February 15, Chicago’s mayor, Anton Cermak, was hit by a bullet intended for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The mayor was standing next to the president-elect at an event in Miami. Cermak lingered a few weeks, and then he was dead. On February 24, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. In March, Hitler consolidated power.

  Prideful and defiant, Chicago threw a party, and everyone was invited. The minute the switch was thrown, rainbow colors blazed along the lakefront, turning the drizzly night into a vision of hope and promise. By August, more than a million people were paying to visit each week. Today might be glum, but look at what’s coming!

  The only thing missing was irony. In Harpers Magazine, Ludwig Lewisohn took a rare contrarian view, arguing that technological advance was not the same as human progress: “Flagrant above all other examples and illustrations of the fallacy that in this machine age we are thinking new thoughts and creating new morals is that delightful machine or group of machines by means of which, sitting in a darkened hall at our ease, we can see far lands strange as dreams which we shall never visit.”

  But for most everyone else, the fair was a beautiful valentine to the future. And what better valentine to the future than a baby?

  * * *

  —

  The pink-and-blue concession on the midway had a big assist from Julius Hess, and help from Herman Bundesen, the health commissioner. The fair’s Executive Committee stepped up, too, and arranged for extra funding through the Infant Aid Society. Chicago’s Lying-in Hospital supported the exhibition. Sarah Morris Hospital sent every preemie patient to the midway, along with the reluctant Miss Evelyn Lundeen. Some of the weaker and sicker infants stayed in Hess beds, kept in back, not on display, but they, too, were part of the Century of Progress.

  Julius Hess had spent the previous decade producing clinical results. Dedicating a 1928 text on infant feeding, he wrote: “To Dr. Martin Couney, I affectionately inscribe this effort to put into practice the experience of a quarter century. The thoughts on feeding premature infants were largely stimulated by his devotion to the welfare of these small infants.”

  These two men depended on each other more than ever. Martin needed respectability, while Julius lacked one critical thing: a propaganda machine. Eleven years after Sarah Morris opened its premature ward, he didn’t have the money he needed, and he was never going to get it without public opinion on his side. Martin had no charts or graphs, statistical analyses, nor could he publish in medical journals. But he knew how to touch the hearts of ordinary people—the kind who paid taxes, the kind who had babies, the kind who, having come from the fair’s well-funded exhibition on eugenics, didn’t see why anything ought to be done for the runts.

  * * *

  —

  Sally Rand, performing her sexy fan dance right next door to Martin, would have succeeded without the help of Chicago’s police, but getting arrested for indecency was wonderful for business. (Legend has it that she quipped she was wearing more than the babies, so what was all the fuss?) Did she ever stop in to visit the little mites? Did Martin sneak a peek at her? He was a busy man, pumping hands, holding court, feeding doctors, answering questions, calling Atlantic City, where Hildegarde was in charge, and Coney Island, where cousin Isador (“Dr. Schulz”) took care of things. For someone who’d spent most of his summers at Sodom by the Sea, Martin was puritanical. Eventually, he requested that a barbed-wire fence go up between concessions so people couldn’t jump the gate from his to hers. Still, he was only human.

  If ever he walked the fairgrounds, he’d have gotten an eyeful. The eugenics show—the first (and last) at an American world’s fair—was just for starters. This particular exhibit was devoted to the eugenicists’ second prong (preventing undesirable births). Their Nazi friends across the sea would be the ones to take the third prong—murder—and twist it into its final shape. Leaving the Hall of Science for the midway, Martin could have seen a show called “Life.” At its entrance was a picture of a stork with a two-headed human fetus; inside, you could see a dead creature floating in a jar. Nature deleting mistakes. Grotesque as it was, it was less heinous than its sophisticated counterpart, with its patina of scientific endorsement.

  On the evening of July 3, Martin might have meandered to Soldier Field for Jewish Day—although he probably didn’t. On July 15, he could have viewed the arrival of twenty-four Italian seaplanes led by Italo Balbo in a show of fascist power. Had he been so inclined, he could have strolled to the fair’s Indian Village, where Chief Blackhorn adorned Balbo (“Chief Flying Eagle”) with a headdress. On October 26, with the fair still going strong, he might have seen the German airship Graf Zeppelin circling the lakefront displaying its might—and he probably did; it was the talk of the town.

  He might have regarded the stars at the Adler Planetarium or the bones at the Field Museum. He could have perused the Time and Fortune Building, sampled (and dismissed) the mayonnaise at Kraft Food Hall. He could have beheld with awe the Lama Temple or the Hall of Religion, or Travel and Transport, with its roof that “breathed.”

  It’s within the realm of possibility that, stepping outside his concession, as millions of people walked by or went through, he winked, unseen, at a teenage boy whose name was William Silverman.

  * * *

  —

  Barbara Fishbein, whose father, Morris, was the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, accompanied him to a gourmet dinner at the Couneys’ almost nightly. Years later, she’d recall that her host professed to have learned his culinary skills while working as an aide to a general in France during the Great War. (Cue Maye quietly rolling her eyes. But of course, the army would send a middle-aged Jewish showman to do the gourmet cooking in France. Martin had no military record.)

  Before he left Chicago, Martin gave Barbara Fishbein a gift.

  Martin Couney’s Spaghetti Sauce for Newlyweds

  Olive oil

  1 clove garlic, minced

  1 large onion, diced

  1 lb. hamburger

  1 can tomatoes

  1 can tomato sauce

  1 can tomato paste

  Salt, pepper, herbs to taste

  Cover the bottom of a two-quart pot with olive oil; brown garlic and remove; add onion and hamburger and lightly brown. Add rest of ingredients and simmer one hour.

  NOT FOR PUBLIC VIEWING

  Memorial Day, 1934. A woman ate a hot dog at a party and regretted it. (Martin would have told her not to do it.) Really, she felt awful. Oh, and she was nine months pregnant with twins. She was rushed to Chicago Lying-in, where as her blood pressure surged, one of Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee’s associates performed an emergency cesarean section.

  The babies, Barbara and Joanie, were full-term but underweight—weaklings in Julius Hess’s book. Their mother had toxemia. Size-wise, the twins were a lopsided pair. At four pounds, Joanie could stay in one of the incubators at Lying-in until she put on a pound and was healthy enough to go home. Three-pound Barbara was sick and given little chance to live.

  * * *

  —

>   When I spoke with Barbara Gerber, she was eighty years old. She lived in California but had grown up on Chicago’s South Side—she recalled skating in front of the University of Chicago, “where they were probably building the atom bomb, but who knew?” And she told me about her birth. She was transferred from Lying-in to Sarah Morris, sick and needing to be transfused. Her father couldn’t afford that, she said, so the nurses snuck him in to give his own blood to his daughter.

  When all the Sarah Morris patients were sent to the Century of Progress, Barbara was kept in the back with the sickest babies—the ones the public never saw.

  Three months passed. “My parents got a call to take me home to die,” Barbara said.

  “Really?” I was shocked. This was the first I’d heard of Martin Couney calling it quits on anyone, ever. But in reality, he wasn’t her physician.

  “I guess I didn’t improve very much,” Barbara said. “My mother’s story was that they carried me out, and I took a deep breath and took off running.”

  Her twin, in contrast, suffered lifelong health problems, including a collapsed lung, and Barbara wondered whether some of them could have been traced to the time she spent in the incubator at Lying-in. Joanie died at the age of forty-eight.

  “Is there anyone else from the class of ’34?” Barbara wanted to know. Then she wanted to know who else I’d met from any year. And she wanted to meet me in person. She would be going to Long Beach, Long Island, in a couple of months. And that’s how a plan began to take shape.

  ALL ABOARD THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

  Chicago, 1934

  At Ripley’s Odditorium on the midway, a two-year-old named Betty Lou Williams was causing a sensation. One of fifteen children born to impoverished sharecropper parents in rural Georgia, Betty had a beautiful brown face, an extra arm, and a pair of stunted, helpless legs emerging from the left side of her torso.

  Rich or poor, in 1934 no surgery could have made Betty resemble other children. Her choices were to live in isolation or make a substantial fortune as a freak. After the fair, she traveled the country and her income shot up to as much as $500 a week. Betty provided for her siblings, putting them through college, before she died at the age of twenty-two.

  In the most famous photo of her, Betty is hugging herself. She looks as if she has somebody else alive in her body, craving escape.

  * * *

  —

  The situation in Europe was getting worse. June 30, the Night of the Long Knives, was the start of a violent purge of the Nazis’ political enemies; people who thought Hitler wouldn’t last long were losing heart.

  Martin’s sister, Betty, had emigrated for Palestine, but his young niece, Ilsa, remained in Berlin, and he feared for her.

  Meanwhile, Maye’s brother, Charles, lived in town. He had been the managing editor of the Chicago Evening Post, but there is no mention or record of his dining at the Couneys’ table. Perhaps because he’d lost the inheritance in favor of Maye, or perhaps because his brother-in-law was not his type, he may have kept his distance.

  Chicago partied on. This second summer hadn’t been in the original plan, but the fair was going to have to run for another season if the backers were to have a prayer of turning a profit. This year’s program guide read, “You have come here to see in epitome the great drama of man’s struggle to lift himself in his weakness to the stars.”

  Sally Rand was back and, having ditched her feathered fans, was dancing in a giant bubble, which resembled—arguably—an amniotic sac.

  Halfway through July, Chicago inaugurated a gift from Benito Mussolini. The engraved Roman column was given in thanks for the warm welcome of Italo Balbo and his seaplanes the previous year.

  Balbo would die in 1940. Almost every structure from the fair would be dismantled. But the column stands. You can find it in Grant Park.

  * * *

  —

  Ten days after the column’s inauguration, the infant incubator reunion, broadcast live, went off without a hiccup. Of the previous summer’s seventy patients, twenty-six had died—thirteen within the first critical twenty-four hours. That’s quite a bit less than the 85 percent survival rate Martin always touted. But subtracting the babies who didn’t last a day (which the great Pierre Budin did as well), you come close. The smallest survivor weighed only one pound, ten ounces at birth, and two others were under the two-pound mark. The achievement was significant, and Julius Hess was keeping careful track.

  All but two survivors came to the reunion. Prominent doctors and members of the Infant Aid Society stood by as Herman Bundesen took the microphone. After beginning with “All the world loves a baby,” he stole the rest of the showman’s spiel, invoking Victor Hugo, Napoleon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Newton, and Darwin. And he pointed out “splendid opportunities” for philanthropic men and women everywhere to contribute to the cause.

  Julius Hess spoke next: “I should like to emphasize the fact that we believe that those premature infants who have normal physiological development for their fetal age and show no inherited disease do not differ significantly as they grow older in weight or in mental development from their brothers and sisters or from other children.” A perfect example of why he needed assistance from a showman.

  Miss May Winter was trotted out as an example of “normal.” Then the microphone was passed back to Martin. He was overwhelmed with gratitude. He said it. It was true. He had never had the good fortune to bring together forty graduates at once. And he was thrilled by the presence of leading doctors “who have come here for the purpose of convincing themselves that these babies are actually worth saving.” Left unsaid: The presence of these doctors was proof at last that he wasn’t crazy, or sleazy, or a quack.

  * * *

  —

  Back in Atlantic City, Hildegarde received a shockingly tiny infant. The newspapers reported his name as Emanuel Sanfilipo and stated that he was born weighing nineteen ounces, in Hammonton, New Jersey. One paper boasted that while Canada had the Dionne quintuplets, Hammonton’s baby was smaller than the littlest of them. When a state emergency relief worker paid a visit to the home, she called her supervisor, who called a councilwoman, and they rushed the infant to the boardwalk.

  Before long, Baby Emanuel was gaining. The problem was, he was born on August 7. In just a couple of weeks, the incubator station would close for the season.

  * * *

  —

  Martin wanted Hildegarde to get on the train and carry the baby one thousand miles to the fair. The other babies in Atlantic City were ready to go home, but not Emanuel—he was under two pounds. The Century of Progress would run until November. And unlike the situation with the Dionne quintuplets—where, without his usual retinue, Martin’s lack of medical training might have been exposed—he would have Julius on hand, plus Maye, Louise, and Hildegarde. Here was a nearly perfect opportunity.

  The drama captivated the nation, as Martin knew it would. At noon on September 12, Hildegarde took Emanuel from the boardwalk in a heated carrier. At 2:50, they arrived at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. Next, they took a taxi crosstown to Grand Central. At 4:15 they boarded the train named the Twentieth Century. Martin, spending a fortune, reserved an entire car, heated to 80 degrees so Hildegarde could safely take the baby out and feed him.

  Everybody waited. The AP News reported that “the flickering spark of life glimmered across half a Continent today . . .” The entire country breathed a sigh of relief when, at nine a.m. on September 13, the Twentieth Century rolled into Chicago with Baby Emanuel, alive.

  * * *

  —

  Less than two weeks later, another impossibly small life arrived. This baby was born at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, weighing one pound, seven ounces, and like most newborns, it had already lost weight. Martin declared this was the littlest infant he had seen. Possibly, it was. “We cannot reveal the child’s name,” he said in a press releas
e, “for that would be a breach of medical ethics. Later, if we are successful in our fight for the child’s life we will be able to give out more information.” He did not say whether the patient was a boy or a girl. The last line of the press release, which the fair sent out, was, “The child is colored.”

  The name was never revealed. Time and again, newspapers describing the shows in New York and Chicago mentioned “lots of Negro and Chinese babies.” Children of color were photographed. But never was a nonwhite parent quoted—not even in the African American papers.

  Louise Recht with a baby at the New York World’s Fair.

  * * *

  —

  Come October, a cold snap forced the city into winter coats. Mobs of people bundled up to come for one last look. The Century of Progress made a modest profit—the fruit of a daring act of faith. In the infant incubators, some one hundred lives were saved.

  But on November 1, just as the fair was shutting down, Baby Emanuel died.

  * * *

  —

  In the winter of 1935, as the Deco pavilions crumbled under the wrecking balls, Herman Bundesen made his move, announcing a comprehensive plan to save the city’s preemies. All Chicago hospitals were to receive protocols and would be required to fill out surveys that would make them aware of their deficiencies. The board of health purchased Hess beds to lend to hospitals and homes, opened free breast milk stations, and required all health professionals to report premature births immediately so a treatment plan could be made. A nurse who was specially trained at Sarah Morris would follow up until the infant weighed eight pounds. Already a frequent radio guest, Dr. Bundesen took a showbiz turn, arranging for a light to flash in a public space whenever a preemie died.