by Dawn Raffel
“Deponent during the lifetime of Dr. Martin A. Couney”: Letter from Anne J. Boylan filed with Hildegarde Couney’s 1956 will, file 4847, Kings County Surrogate Court Archive.
Martin, who’d “invented” the incubators, never held: Patent records from this time are not digitized. Hard-copy records can be found at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library. I spent a day there reviewing every relevant year, looking for Couney, Coney, Cohn—and Schenkein for good measure.
All the Pretty Preemies
“Wipe Hall with Doctor’s Body”: The headline appeared in New York’s Evening World, February 25, 1909, p. 2.
“Dr. Couney: It has come to my knowledge”: Ibid.
A physician named Solomon Fischel: After his sudden death, The New York Times reported that in Europe he had been “an eye specialist.” “Dies Ten Hours After Marriage,” The New York Times, October 20, 1913, p. 20.
Solomon Fischel was wealthy: At the time of his death in 1913, his net worth was estimated at $100,000 (just shy of 2.5 million in 2017 dollars); ibid.
what was now the Infant Incubator Company: New York State certificate of incorporation dated May 10, 1905, New York State Department of State, Division of Corporations, book 14, p. 218. The three shareholders are Solomon Fischel, Samuel Schenkein, and Henry Kaufman. Mr. Kaufman does not appear in any subsequent records of the company or the shows.
A child weighing under two pounds: “Incubators Save Babies Life [sic],” Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1905, p. 9.
the daughter of the Trib’s own editor: A. J. Liebling, “Patron of the Preemies,” The New Yorker, June 3, 1939, p. 23.
the Tribune began hosting benefit days: “Ready for Babies Aid Day,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1907, p. 8; “Riverview Park Aids the Babies,” Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1908, p. 12.
the 1907 fete: “White City Astir to Succor Babies,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1907, p. 5.
“to succor poor women”: Joseph Bolivar DeLee, “Chicago Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary,” Northwestern Medical School Yearbook, 1903, clipping from the collection of Dr. Lawrence Gartner; the founding of the hospital is also cited in “Chicago Lying-in and Hospital and Dispensary,” The Reform Advocate, March 1902, p. 77.
DeLee had two Lion-type incubators; by 1902, he had four: Lawrence M. Gartner and Carol B. Gartner, “The Care of Premature Infants: A Historical Perspective,” in Neonatal Intensive Care: A History of Excellence, A Symposium Commemorating Child Health Day, NIH Publication No. 92-2786 (Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, 1992), p. 5, http://www.neonatology.org/classics/nic.nih1985.pdf.
He would end up turning . . . Dr. Isaac Abt: Gerald M. 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.
outposts like the Wonderland Amusement Park in Minneapolis and Revere Beach, Massachusetts: Wonderland Souvenir Magazine (Revere Beach, Massachusetts), May 30–September 9, 1906, Wisconsin Historical Society.
Dr. Matthew D. Mann and his colleagues: Dr. Mann kept numerous newspaper clippings about the ongoing contentiousness of the doctors. There was also finger-pointing among those who felt the initial updates gave the public false hope. Buffalo History Museum Research Library, M82-5, Dr. Matthew D. Mann Scrapbooks.
Austere, with a commanding presence: Alwin C. Rambar, “Julius Hess, M.D.,” in Historical Review and Recent Advances in Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine, ed. G. F. Smith, P. N. Smith, and D. Vidyasagar (Chicago: Mead Johnson Nutritional Division, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 161–164.
Upon his return to Chicago: Ibid.
Yet the Chicago physician never recorded: Julius Hess archived copious papers but left no record of when this friendship began. I suspect he had to walk a fine line between crediting Couney’s influence and maintaining his own reputation.
Morris Fishbein would eventually write: Chicago Medical Society Bulletin, January 26, 1957, cited by L. Joseph Butterfield, “The Incubator Doctor in Denver: A Medical Missing Link,” in The 1970 Denver Westerners Brand Book, ed. Jackson C. Thode (Denver: Denver Westerners, 1971), p. 358. The obituary has some problems, as Fishbein also says, incorrectly, that Couney was at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and that Hess was thirty-two when the White City opened (he would have been twenty-nine).
confusion over when the White City shows ran: Writing in The New Yorker in 1939, A. J. Liebling erroneously said Couney was in the White City twenty-five years earlier, which Couney buff L. Joseph Butterfield later picked up as 1914. Still later, the medical historian and Couney buff Jeffrey P. Baker, in The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Intensive Care (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 104, wrote that while there were conflicting versions, most likely their meeting took place in the White City in 1914. I think the misunderstanding diminished the perceived significance of Couney’s influence.
it’s reasonable to suspect the meeting came closer to 1905: In 1951, Hess wrote that his interest in preemies began in 1906, but he did not say what sparked it. Julius H. Hess, “Chicago Plan for Care of Premature Infants,” Journal of the American Medical Association 146, no. 10 (July 3, 1951), p. 891.
the 1909 competition for best preemie: “Prize Incubator Baby of the World,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 12, 1909, p. G-2. The subhead says that five hundred “mites” were saved by the “physician and his aides.” The article itself states that within the past five years, some five hundred Chicago babies were saved, noting that hospitals had a few machines, but most of the lifesaving work was done in the sideshow. It’s possible they included some of those saved in hospitals in the count of five hundred.
Burton Douglas Stevens . . . Little Miss Couney: Ibid.
Magnetic Tape
Dr. Gartner . . . highly regarded neonatologist: In addition to his other credentials, Gartner cofounded and has served as president of both the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition.
“His name was Cohn”: Lawrence Gartner, conversation with the author, April 24, 2015. All of Dr. Gartner’s quotations in this chapter are from that conversation.
multiple legal documents: Most are cited specifically in other instances in this book. For the 1904 passport application, “United States Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJG-B54R, accessed November 20, 2017.
“He was very altruistic”: George C. Tilyou III, interview with the author, June 27, 2015.
A Dream in Flames
the Great Fredini: Coney Island Museum. See also https://thegreatfredini.com/2014/07/31/thompson-dundys-luna-park-3d-printed/.
“At Steeplechase, if the fact” . . . “But should Dreamland”: Edo McCullough, Good Old Coney Island: A Sentimental Journey into the Past (1957; New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 196–197.
For the 1911 season, he’d ditched the all-white theme: Ibid., pp. 197–198.
George Tilyou, Frederic Thompson, and Samuel Gumpertz: Ibid., p. 91.
Dreamland was a disaster waiting to happen: McCullough explains why it was a fire hazard, ibid., p. 197.
the water pressure was weak: For a detailed description of the water problem, along with the problems of the spreading flames, see ibid., pp. 204–218.
In the morning, it would report: “Flames Sweep Coney Island,” The New York Times, May 27, 1911, p. 1; a fourth subhead reads “Incubator Babies Killed.”
Miss Graf had been just about: McCullough, Good Old Coney Island, pp. 208–209.
“at least three other infants”: “Flames Sweep Coney Island,” p. 1.
“All Well with the Babies”: “All Well with the Babies,” The New York Times, May 28, 1911, p. 1.
Martin Couney wasn’t quoted:
In 1939, he would tell A. J. Liebling a different version of this story, in which he ran with the babies and doubled them with up with preemies on display at Luna Park; this version would be used in his 1950 New York Times obituary. But it doesn’t agree at all with the reports published at the time of the fire. By the time he made this claim, Solomon Fischel had been dead for nearly thirty years. A. J. Liebling, “Patron of the Preemies,” The New Yorker, June 3, 1939, p. 22.
“That the infants who were on exhibition” . . . “purely mercenary”: “All Well with the Babies,” p. 1.
had attempted, legislatively, to shut them down: Although the attempt was apparently made—publications from long after the fact, including Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Care (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), refer to it—there is no remaining legislative record of the discussion or vote, nor is it mentioned anywhere in the Society’s archived annual reports. The latter reflect an organization devoted to helping abused and neglected children.
had just moved to a new, seven-story building: Harold Speert, The Sloane Hospital Chronicle: A History of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (New York: Presbyterian Hospital, 1988), p. 158.
On admission, kerosene and ether: Ibid., pp. 169–170.
Sloane Hospital had one hundred cribs: Ibid., p. 158.
Babies Hospital and similar institutions were rejecting: The precipitous decline of incubators in the early twentieth century is summed up well 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; 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); and in many of the writings of Julius Hess and his nurse Evelyn Lundeen, which are archived at the University of Chicago and cited later in this book. See also the last note, at “Fear of hospitalism,” for the chapter “The Crime of the Decade” (p. 247).
the animal keepers freed their charges: The plight of the animals was widely reported. See McCullough, Good Old Coney Island, pp. 212–231; the book gives a heartbreaking blow-by-blow.
Solomon Fischel’s Saint Bernard: “All Well with the Babies,” p. 1.
he would go to Manhattan’s City Hall: “Dies Ten Hours After Marriage,” The New York Times, October 20, 1913, p. 20. The article details the whole grim scene.
“physical force” . . . “in a hysterical condition”: Ibid.
The Forgotten Woman
“It is my earnest wish and desire”: Amelie Louise Recht’s 1951 will, file 3130, Kings County Surrogate Court Archive.
Her only relations . . . Catholic masses: Ibid.
Building Better Babies
Clark and Watts debuted: 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), p. 144.
“advance civilization by leaps and bounds”: “Our Own Page,” Woman’s Home Companion, March 1913, p. 27, as cited ibid.
the magazine would provide gold, silver, and bronze medals: Klaus, Every Child a Lion, p. 144.
Hundreds of pediatricians participated: Ibid.
Within the first year, forty-five states: Anna Steese Richardson, “A Year of Better Babies,” Woman’s Home Companion, March 1914, pp. 19–20, as cited ibid., p. 15.
“The baby health contest was essentially”: Klaus, Every Child a Lion, p. 146.
“circumference of chest and abdomen; quality of skin, fat, and muscles”: Lucia B. Harriman, “Oregon Mothers Conduct Eugenics Department in State Fair,” Child-Welfare Magazine 7 (1912), p. 84, as cited ibid., p. 148.
Even Julius Hess himself served: “Initial Better Babies Contest at State Fair Declared Fine Venture,” Illinois State Register (Springfield), September 21, 1915, p. 8.
“speed the day when we can have scientific elimination”: Letter from Mary E. Bates to Julia Lathrop, March 10, 1913 (U.S. Children’s Bureau, 4-15-4-3), as cited in Klaus, Every Child a Lion, p. 150.
The Day of Couney Finally Arrives
“The Day of Couney”: July 20, 2015.
the German physicians who’d done reconnaissance missions: Leonore Ballowitz, M.D., and Julia Whitefield, M.D., Ph.D., confirmed that it was Lion who showed the babies in Berlin. Dr. Whitefield visited the sole medical school in Leipzig at that time and tried to look up Martin Couney’s academic records. “Leipzig told me that Couney was never immatriculated [sic]. . . . According to them, they have nearly gapless records (despite two wars),” she wrote to Dr. Paul Toubas, another of the Couney buffs, in a 1997 e-mail. A search in Berlin also yielded no record of matriculation. From Lawrence Gartner’s files.
“Perhaps Couney ‘forgot’ he had a predecessor”: William Silverman, handwritten note about Felix Marx’s letter, from Lawrence Gartner’s files.
Julius Hess and a New York pediatrician: Letter from Thurman Givan to Lawrence Gartner, December 17, 1970, Lawrence Gartner’s personal papers, and another correspondence to and from same, January 18, 1971, Newborn Medicine History Collection, Pediatric History Center, American Academy of Pediatrics. In addition, Givan was looking to see whether Couney took any kickbacks from doctors; he was convinced he didn’t.
“the first person in the United States to offer specialized care”: Press release, April 1970 (exact date unknown), provided by Lawrence Gartner. The plaque, now in the collection of the Atlantic City Historical Museum, has the same wording.
“extraordinary progenitor of a new field”: L. Joseph Butterfield, “The Incubator Doctor in Denver: A Medical Missing Link,” in The 1970 Denver Westerners Brand Book, ed. Jackson C. Thode (Denver: Denver Westerners, 1971), p. 338.
“the forerunners of the modern premature nursery”: L. Joseph Butterfield, abstract form for “A Photohistory of the Incubator,” presentation to be given at 23rd Annual Conference on Neonatal/Perinatal Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, District VIII Section on Perinatal Pediatrics, May 22–24, 1998.
Thurman Givan, who said they’d been inspired: Letter from Thurman Givan to Lawrence Gartner, January 18, 1971, Newborn Medicine History Collection, Pediatric History Center, American Academy of Pediatrics.
“It would be fatuous to attach deep significance”: William A. Silverman, “Incubator-Baby Side Shows,” Pediatrics 64, no. 2 (August 1979), p. 140.
Subsequent academic writings: Among others, Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Care (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), reaches a similar conclusion.
On the seven minutes of tape that survived: Ilsa Ephraim, interview with Lawrence Gartner, 1980 (exact date unknown).
“There was a big exposition in Berlin”: Ilsa Ephraim, interview with Lawrence Gartner, January 4, 1980.
Let’s Pretend I Wasn’t There
Martin had plenty of time to walk the grounds: L. Joseph Butterfield, “The Incubator Doctor in Denver: A Medical Missing Link,” in The 1970 Denver Westerners Brand Book, ed. Jackson C. Thode (Denver: Denver Westerners, 1971), p. 339. A retired electrician who’d worked at Lakeside remembered Martin as short, stocky, and jolly, and that he spent a lot of time walking around the park.
Most of the city’s doctors weren’t even aware: Ibid., p. 342.
Meanwhile, at the eugenic section: 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), p. 148.
“to understand an interest”: Butterfield, “The Incubator Doctor in Denver,” p. 342.
Keep the Incubators, Please
Every conceivable species of minutiae: Correspondence related to infant incubators,
Panama Pacific International Exposition Collection, BANC MSS C-A 190, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
He had also invented his own incubator: One of Julius Hess’s machines was displayed in the American Academy of Pediatrics; the description is based on my viewing. During the Day of Couney, Dr. Lawrence Gartner expressed the opinion that Hess’s incubator was inferior to Couney’s because you couldn’t see the baby.
Julius Hess was offering the ugly-but-functional best: A chronicle can be found in Julius H. Hess, Premature and Congenitally Diseased Infants (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1922), p. v, in Julius Hays Hess Papers, Crerar Ms 51, Box 2, untitled folder, University of Chicago Library. One instance of the profession’s attitude toward incubators can be found in Joseph S. Wall, “The Status of the Child in Obstetric Practice,” Journal of the American Medical Association 66 (1916), p. 252.
Julius Hess would save his certificate of participation: Hess Panama-Pacific Exposition Award, 1915, in Julius Hays Hess Papers, Crerar Ms 51, Box 16, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
teammates who called themselves Indians: Barry Spitz, Dipsea: The Greatest Race (San Anselmo, CA: Potrero Meadow, 1993), p. x.
walked the trail two or three times a week: “Dipsea Originator Is Motor Car Fan,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1919, p. 38.
he persisted in calling his little brother “Dr. Coney”: Even his funeral record (date of death, February 6, 1949) lists his brother as “Dr. Martin Coney,” presumably from his own documents.
Dundy died and Thompson drank: John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill and Wang: 1978), p. 111.
Thompson fell ill, and never regained his health: “Frederic Thompson, Show Builder Dies . . . Made and Lost Fortune,” The New York Times, June 7, 1919. According to the obituary, he’d been ill with Bright’s disease since 1915.
a premature baby named Anna: Nedra Justice (the premature baby’s daughter-in-law), interview with the author, July 14, 2015.