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BABY I NC U BATOR S : ey
Coney Island’s Longest Running Sideshow
BY: REBECCA BOWYER
I
t’s 17 July 1901. You’ve given birth to tiny triplets. Together your three baby daughters weigh as much as one healthy baby.
The doctors tell you there’s a 97 per cent chance they’ll die. Unless you take them to the local Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. I’m sorry, WHAT?
Take ’em down to the Expo, pop them in this super expensive newfangled machine called a ‘baby incubator’ and leave them in the charge of the wet nurses and doctors there. They’ll be right as rain in no time. But I can’t afford all that. I can barely afford to feed them and I don’t have insurance. Don’t worry, it’ll cost you nothing. They charge an admission fee for people to come through and gawk at the babies. It covers all the medical expenses. How dreadful! Charging admission fees to gawk at babies! Ok, let’s have a little chat about peeking into other peoples’ lives. Hands up if you watched Big Brother. Oh, that’s just so incredibly low brow. I don’t watch that crap. How about the show Miracle Babies or perhaps 23 week babies: The Price of Life, a ‘harrowing’ documentary filmed at the neonatal unit at Birmingham Women’s Hospital. Or maybe RPA, filmed at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for more than a decade? Oh yes, they’re just amazing shows. So much fascinating information, and those poor, poor little babies. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if they’d survive or not. Isn’t it just incredible what they can do with medical science these days? 46
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Medical science for premmie babies in 1901. Incubators for premature babies were invented by Alexandre Lion in France in 1880. There were no neo-natal facilities in hospitals back then – there wasn’t a whole lot they could do for premature babies and the death rate was around 85 per cent. In 1896 the French sent six of their newfangled baby incubators to the Berlin Expo – basically a big fair where countries got together to show off how clever they were with their industrial advancements. They borrowed a few premature babies from a local hospital and put them in the amazing glass boxes. Incredibly, all six babies survived. The ‘Child Hatchery’ exhibit was a resounding success. Unfortunately most hospitals were not convinced of the new technology and the incubators weren’t widely used in established neo-natal units until the 1930s.
How did the baby incubators end up at fairs? The ‘Child Hatchery’ at the Berlin Expo was so popular, Alexandre Lion starting charging an admission fee to try to reduce the crowds. Another paediatrician, Dr Martin Couney, picked up where Alexandre Lion had left off. Because hospitals weren’t interested, he instead used the admission fee model to fund the building and running of the incubators at exhibitions all over the world before settling into a permanent home at Coney Island.
Peninsula Kids – Winter 2016
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26/05/2016 11:42:27 AM