Home » People & Society » Family & Relationships » Family » In the 20’s a freak show saved over 6500 premature babies’ lives. Hospitals would leave them to die; but a “fake” Dr by the name of Martin Couney would display the babies in an experimental glass case called an incubator. He used the proceeds to pay for the show, seeing an 85% survival rate.

In the 20’s a freak show saved over 6500 premature babies’ lives. Hospitals would leave them to die; but a “fake” Dr by the name of Martin Couney would display the babies in an experimental glass case called an incubator. He used the proceeds to pay for the show, seeing an 85% survival rate.

The Man Who Ran a Carnival Attraction That Saved Thousands of Premature Babies Wasn’t a Doctor at All

Nurses in starched white uniforms and doctors in medical coats tended to babies in glass and steel incubators. The infants had been born many weeks premature and well below a healthy birth weight. Stores didn’t make clothes small enough to fit their tiny, skeletal frames so the nurses dressed them in dolls’ clothes and knitted bonnets.

A sign above the entrance read “Living Babies in Incubators” in letters so large they could be read from the other end of the Chicago World’s Fair grounds, which took place over 18 months in 1933 and 1934. The infant incubator exhibit was built at a cost of $75,000 (worth $1.4 million today) and was painted in a patriotic red, white and blue.

The men in charge were leading Chicago pediatrician Dr. Jul… Continue Reading (6 minute read)

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