The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

by Dawn Raffel

  drew breath for twenty minutes: Barbara Horn, interview with the author, February 14, 2017.

  “All the World Loves a Baby”

  the cops shot down John Dillinger: “Kill Dillinger Here,” Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1934 (reporting the previous day’s shooting), p. 1.

  hottest day ever on record: National Weather Service, http://www.weather.gov/lot/Chicago_Temperature_Records; “Break in Heat Due Tonight; Airport 109,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1934, p. 1. The record remains unbroken as of this writing.

  people fled to the beaches: Tom Skilling, “Baked City: Chicago’s Hottest Week Occurred July 19–25, 1934,” Chicago Tribune, July 19, 2009, p. I-35.

  a written instruction not to conduct: Infant incubator homecoming script for July 25, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Scrapbook, Crerar Ms 227, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  the midget wedding: “Midget City News, Summer 1934,” p. 13, Century of Progress International Exposition Scrapbook, Crerar Ms 227, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. The wedding took place on July 13, 1934.

  forty-two “lusty-lunged boys and girls”: Press release, July 18, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Press Releases July 16–31, Crerar Ms 225, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  Singles, twins . . . Miss May Winter: Press release, July 24, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Press Releases July 16–31. The press release is written in past tense but was released the day before the reunion.

  Anyone who’d ever bought a pickle in Atlantic City: The Heinz Pickle Pier was a major attraction. For an excellent history of Atlantic City’s historic boardwalk, see Vicki Gold Levi, Lee Eisenberg, Rod Kennedy, and Susan Subtle, Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness (New York: C. N. Potter, 1979).

  Excepting some of the members of the medical establishment: For example, in a letter dated November 15, 1979, George Waddell, M.D., wrote to William Silverman, M.D., about his experience touring the 1934 show with residents from the University of Chicago Clinics. Waddell stated that he’d been unaware that Couney had been putting on shows for more than thirty years. He also wrote that while the doctors were impressed with the incubators, which were “far better” than any they’d seen in their short experience, they also felt “a little uneasy in the belief that there was something unethical about the whole show.” His letter encapsulates the ambivalence of many physicians; he added, “I like to think that the Isolette in some way came into being because of the example of Dr. Couney’s incubator.” Newborn Medicine History Collection, Pediatric History Center, American Academy of Pediatrics.

  The script included Dr. Julius Hess . . . And Dr. Herman Bundesen: Infant incubator homecoming script for July 25, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Scrapbook.

  a man who was known to be: Dr. Herman Bundesen’s fondness for publicity is detailed in Gerald Oppenheimer, “Prematurity as a Public Health Problem: US Policy from the 1920s to the 1960s,” American Journal of Public Health 86, no. 6 (June 1996), pp. 870–878. In 1933 alone, Dr. Bundesen was on the radio 435 times.

  air-conditioned: “Babies, Babies, and Babies at World’s Fair: Incubator Kiddies Will Be on Exhibit,” Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1932, p. 20.

  Over in the Great Hall within the Hall of Science: For a complete description, see Harry H. Laughlin (Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York), “The Eugenics Exhibit at Chicago: A Description of the Wall-Panel Survey of Eugenics Exhibited in the Hall of Science, Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, 1933–34,” The Journal of Heredity 26, no. 4 (April 1935), pp. 155–162. The previous issue of the journal (March 1935) states on its cover that the coming issue will include reporting of the first world’s fair to recognize “the science and art of applying heredity to human affairs.”

  pickled fetuses for public edification: Medical Science Exhibits, 1934. University of Illinois at Chicago, University Library Special Collections, Century of Progress records, Box 24, folder 326, pp. 114–116.

  What he lacked in height: Most of his records place Martin Couney at about five-seven or five-eight.

  Hiya, Doc, where’dja get the eggs?: Multiple newspapers mention this and other ridiculous questions; see also Oliver Pilat and Jo Ranson, Sodom by the Sea: An Affectionate History of Coney Island (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1941), p. 198.

  Today, they were serving an elegant luncheon: Press release, July 18, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Press Releases July 16–31.

  multiple seatings at dinner: Letter from Barbara Fishbein Friedell to Richard F. Snow, 1981 (exact date unknown), Newborn Medicine History Collection, Pediatric History Center, American Academy of Pediatrics.

  here in Chicago, they rarely left the fairgrounds: Friedell distinctly recalls this, although there is an element of doubt. The Chicago Tribune noted that in early August of the previous year, Dr. Couney was so irritated by the noise from Harry’s New York Bar across the way that he’d begun decamping to a “swanky” hotel each night at ten p.m. “Sauce for the Goose,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1933, p. F1.

  Martin loved to cook . . . His palate was discerning: Ruth Freudenthal (Couney’s grandniece), interview with the author, August 18, 2015. In a 1939 newspaper, Martin Couney is quoted as saying, “I can do more with a soupbone than most Americans can do with steak.” Otherwise undated, unidentified clipping, Newborn Medicine History Collection, Pediatric History Center, American Academy of Pediatrics.

  Julius and Clara Hess were often . . . les escargots: Letter from Friedell to Snow.

  his personal story, which he continued to perfect: Martin Couney told versions of this story to numerous reporters and private individuals over the course of several decades; it has been widely repeated in popular magazines, books, and contemporary newspapers. For the most complete telling during his lifetime, see A. J. Liebling, “Patron of the Preemies,” The New Yorker, June 3, 1939, pp. 20–24.

  William Randolph Hearst had a genius idea: Ibid.; see also William A. Silverman, “Incubator-Baby Side Shows,” Pediatrics 64, no. 2 (August 1979), p. 137. Silverman notes that Chicago nurse Evelyn Lundeen told him that Couney was convinced all the quintuplets would die. I speculate that he also didn’t want his secret to slip out: Martin Couney always had physicians on his payroll, which would have been hard to finesse in rural Canada. Finally, there’s the possibility that the decision wasn’t his: the Tribune reported that the Canadian obstetrician opposed a plan that would have moved the quintuplets to Chicago. “Doctor Vetoes Plans to Show ‘Quints’ at Fair,” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1934, p. 1.

  “We bring you the world’s first Homecoming”: Infant incubator homecoming script for July 25, 1934, Century of Progress International Exposition Scrapbook.

  “All the world loves a baby”: Ibid.

  The Obit That Wouldn’t Die

  its plastic dome modeled on the B-29 bomber: This information was provided to me by Dr. Lawrence Gartner, professor emeritus of pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago and former chairman of the board of the American Pediatric Society, July 20, 1915.

  One theory held that since two- and three-pound humans: William A. Silverman, Retrolental Fibroplasia: A Modern Parable (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1980), p. 76.

  If oxygen helped preemies breathe: William A. Silverman, Where’s the Evidence? Debates in Modern Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 2; Silverman, Retrolental Fibroplasia.

  No day was complete . . . he picked up the paper and saw: William A. Silverman, address to colleagues at annual Newborn Dinner, April 30, 1970, recorded by Lawrence Gartner, M.D.

  Martin A. Couney, age eighty: “Martin A. Couney, ‘Incubator Doctor,’” The New York Times, March 2, 1950, p. 27.

  rare
gigot: Couney had a taste for rare gigot. A. J. Liebling, “Patron of the Preemies,” The New Yorker, June 3, 1939, p. 21.

  at the mention of his late wife: Jo Ranson, a Brooklyn reporter who frequently covered Couney during his lifetime, wrote that after Maye’s death, he could never mention her name without tears. Oliver Pilat and Jo Ranson, Sodom by the Sea: An Affectionate History of Coney Island (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1941), p. 194.

  A Showman Is Born

  trouble rumbled across the border: The Cohns were probably aware of the coming conflict. “War between France and Prussia was widely foreseen . . . in 1866,” writes Michael Howard in The Franco-Prussian War (1961; London: Granada, 1979), p. 40. In 1939, Martin Couney told A. J. Liebling of The New Yorker that his family moved shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, but family records and vital statistics records indicate otherwise.

  Fredericke already had three children . . . this child would be her last: It seems somehow fitting that Jewish birth records for that year and place do not exist, but I thank Anna Przybyszewska Drozd of the Jewish Genealogy & Family Heritage Center of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw for her endeavors on my behalf. Family information was compiled from numerous records, including Martin Couney’s New York City marriage license, dated September 12, 1903; his passport application, dated November 8, 1904; and Alfons’s burial certificate, dated February 6, 1949. In addition, information was provided to William Silverman by Martin Couney’s niece, Ilsa, and her husband, Alfred Ephraim, most likely in the late 1960s. Lawrence Gartner gleaned more in 1980.

  Fredericke’s people, the Levys, were doctors: Silverman and Gartner, from the sources detailed in the previous note; reiterated by Ruth Freudenthal, Ilse Ephraim’s daughter, interview with the author, August 18, 2015; it was Freudenthal who mentioned Napoleon.

  It was home to a well-known publisher: Monasch Bar Loebel, Lebenserinnerungen/Memoirs/Pamiętnik. English trans. Peter Fraenkel, including a brief history of Krotoschin (Krotoszyn, Poland: Society of the Friends and Researchers of the Krotoszyn Region, 2004), pp. 83–98.

  If one saves a single life: Sanhedrin 4:5.

  They were merchants: Michael Simonson, archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, in correspondence with the author on October 20, 2015, provided the insight that many of the Jews in Krotoschin were secularized merchants and business owners, and that they left in search of opportunity and advancement.

  Only seventeen Jewish people: “Krotoszyn,” The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, ed. Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: New York University Press, 2001), vol. 2, p. 681. This article chronicles Krotoschin’s population decline from the end of the nineteenth century through 1939.

  Et Voilà! The Artificial Hen

  Not since Napoleon III walked these grounds: For a description of this fair, including a comparison of the previous fair, in which “the proudest monarch upon earth moved before our view,” see Henry Morford, Paris and Half-Europe in ’78: The Paris Exposition of 1878, Its Side-Shows and Excursions (New York: Geo. W. Carleton and Morford’s Travel Publication Office, 1879), p. 6.

  The purpose was to show the world that France was back: Ibid., p. 17.

  The literal French birth rate: Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Care (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 45.

  Dr. Étienne Tarnier was passing the afternoon: Ibid., p. 26.

  This population plunge was deeply troubling: Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 14–15.

  Tarnier had developed axis-traction forceps: Walter Radcliffe, Milestones in Midwifery and the Secret Instrument (San Francisco: Norman Publishing, 1989), p. 93.

  Under 2,000 grams (4.4 pounds), maybe seven months’ gestation: Jeffrey P. Baker, “The Incubator Controversy: Pediatricians and the Origins of Premature Infant Technology in the United States, 1890 to 1910,” Pediatrics 87, no. 5 (May 1991), p. 655; Baker, The Machine in the Nursery, p. 21.

  The Jardin d’Acclimatation: The history of the zoo, including the eating of animals, and the human zoo, can be found on the Jardin d’Acclimatation website: http://jardindacclimatation.fr/150-ans-dhistoire/. Castor and Pollux have disappeared from that site but are discussed in numerous other sources, including Richard D. E. Burton, Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 319.

  the new machines designed for hatching and fattening: Guide du promeneur au Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation (Paris: Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation du Bois de Boulogne, March 1, 1878), p. 27.

  At Leipzig Maternity Hospital: Baker, The Machine in the Nursery, pp. 28–30. It isn’t entirely clear exactly when Credé began using the Warmewänne. Baker speculates that it was about twenty years before Tarnier’s epiphany; other accounts figure at least ten. (The warming tub in St. Petersburg, Russia, preceded Credé; it’s generally dated to 1835.) By all accounts, Credé was using a kind of incubation well ahead of Tarnier and, according to Baker, was irritated by his rival’s claims. Further notice of Credé and his machine can be found in “The Use of Incubators for Infants,” The Lancet 1 (May 29, 1897), pp. 1490–1491.

  Peasants would try to save their weakling babies: Ibid.

  But Carl Credé’s rival would publish first: Baker, The Machine in the Nursery, p. 30.

  By 1880, Étienne Tarnier had his couveuse: Ibid., pp. 27–28.

  Tarnier reported that his couveuse cut the mortality rate: Ibid.

  stewing the patients . . . To skirt that gruesome risk: Ibid.

  Pierre Budin . . . must have had it in his mind: Ibid., p. 49, notes that Auvard’s star subsequently sank while Budin’s rose.

  William Silverman and the Couney Buffs Convene

  Illinois Nurse of the Year: Two clippings from unidentified Chicago newspapers: Lois Wille, “Saving Premature Babies Her Job for 34 Years” (probably Chicago Daily News), October 14, 1958, and Nancy McGill, “Illinois Nurse of the Year,” October 17, 1958, both in Julius Hays Hess Papers, Box 1, Folder 13, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

  During an afternoon spent feeding martinis: William A. Silverman, address to colleagues at annual Newborn Dinner, April 30, 1970, recorded by Lawrence Gartner, M.D.; William A. Silverman, “Incubator-Baby Side Shows,” Pediatrics 64, no. 2 (August 1979), p. 137.

  Drs. Silverman, Gartner, and Butterfield began to call themselves: Lawrence Gartner, interview with the author, July 20, 2015.

  people strained to capture fraying threads of memory: This is my assessment, based on listening to numerous tape recordings of interviews conducted by Lawrence and Carol Gartner.

  “He wasn’t pretentious, he was real nice to you”: Jerome Champion, interview with Lawrence Gartner, April 1970.

  “I’ve always felt a little bit concerned”: Silverman, address at 1970 Newborn Dinner, recorded by Gartner.

  Michael Cohn Sees an Elephant, and the Light of a New World

  hopeful and wistful and nervy with fear: Martin Couney did not leave any impressions of his emigration, which was more than ten years earlier than he wanted everyone to believe. For a depiction of the journey to port and the trip across the Atlantic, I relied on archival letters from German immigrants who made the crossing in the same time period, in Walter D. Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Helbich, and Ulrike Sommer, eds., News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home, trans. Susan Carter Vogel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

  at the port of Hamburg, an eighteen-year-old: The ship manifest of the Gellert (Manifest ID 00040642; National Archives identifier 1746067) and the arrival records at Castle Garden (Castlegarden.org), the immigrant intake center that preceded Ellis Island, confirm
the passage of eighteen-year-old “Martin” Cohn from Krotoschin, steerage class. (This jibes with later records, such as his naturalization and his passport application, where he refers to his 1888 arrival.) It’s possible that he was already using the name Martin rather than Michael at the time of boarding.

  His father had died: A death record for Hermann Cohn has not been found. William A. Silverman, “Incubator-Baby Side Shows,” Pediatrics 64, no. 2 (August 1979), p. 127, says that Martin’s father died when he was young. This information was most likely provided to Silverman by Ilsa Ephraim, Martin Couney’s niece.

  His brother Alfons emigrated first: Fifteen-year-old Alfons Hugo Cohn arrived at Castle Garden on November 8, 1882. Castlegarden.org.

  Jaunty, stylish Alfons: Alfons is described as a “stylish Frenchman” in an account of his 1893 arrest over a fight at the Gravesend (Coney Island) racetrack, “A Story of Assault,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 12, 1893, p. 5. William Silverman, most likely drawing from his conversation with Ilse Ephraim, noted that Alfons was a jockey. Alfons’s March 29, 1894, naturalization in New York County’s Superior Court lists his occupation as “clerk.” A New York newspaper article about “missing persons,” titled “Anybody Seen These?” (The World, June 3, 1896, p. 4), states that “former [New York City] Register Ferdinand Levy received a very pathetic letter a few days ago from Fredericka [sic] Cohn of Krotochin.” She was searching for her son Alfons, who had left home about fifteen years before and had been a bank clerk; he also had racehorses.

  The pachyderm-shaped building was the Elephant Hotel: Coney Island lore holds that immigrants’ first sight of the New World during this time was the bizarre Elephant Colossus. This was explained to me by Jay Singer, a docent at the Coney Island Museum. An excellent description of the hotel can be found in Edo McCullough, Good Old Coney Island: A Sentimental Journey into the Past (1957; New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 55; another, stating that it was the first edifice seen by immigrants, is in Michael Immerso, Coney Island: The People’s Playground (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 38.