SYMHC Classics: Dr. Couney's Baby Sideshow

Summary

SYMHC Classics: Dr. Couney's Baby Sideshow

Episode Summary – Stuff You Missed in History Class

Introduction to the Episode

In this classic episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class (SYMHC Classics: Dr. Couney's Baby Sideshow), hosts Holly Fry and Tracy V. Wilson delve into the intriguing and controversial history of Dr. Martin Couney and his groundbreaking yet ethically complex baby incubator sideshows. Released on March 15, 2025, the episode uncovers how Couney transformed the perception and care of premature babies in the early 20th century.

Premature Baby Care in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Before the advent of incubators, premature babies faced grim prospects. Holly Fry explains, "Today, when people use the phrase premature baby, they typically mean a baby who was born before 37 weeks gestation. But during the time that we're talking about today, that term was a lot more nebulous" (05:17). These infants were often labeled as weaklings, and mainstream medical care offered little beyond keeping them warm, with high mortality rates persisting.

The Invention and Development of the Incubator

The transformation began with the development of the incubator by French obstetrician Stéphane Tarnier in the 19th century. Martin Cooney summarizes, "Tarnier's invention wasn't really able to be put into widespread use. Most babies in France were being born at home, not in the hospital" (08:55). Alexandre Lyon later patented an improved incubator in 1889, introducing features like ventilation and temperature regulation, though high costs limited widespread adoption.

Enter Dr. Martin Couney: The Pioneer of Incubator Sideshows

Martin Cooney recounts Dr. Martin Couney’s journey, highlighting inconsistencies in Couney’s background. "According to Couney, he went to Berlin on Boudin's instruction to run the child hatchery at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition. But none of that seems to actually be true" (16:28). Couney, originally Michael Cohen, immigrated to the US in 1888 and quickly established himself in London before bringing his incubator exhibitions to the United States.

The Incubator Exhibitions: Innovation Meets Entertainment

Couney partnered with Samuel Schenkhein to debut incubator exhibits at the Victorian Era Exhibition in London, where up to 200,000 visitors viewed premature babies being cared for in incubators. Martin Cooney notes, "The incubator displays had always had an educational component explaining what the incubators were and how they worked" (21:18). These exhibits became permanent fixtures at amusement parks like Luna Park on Coney Island, where Couney showcased incubators alongside real babies, blending medical care with public entertainment.

Ethical Controversies and Criticisms

Despite saving thousands of lives, Couney's methods attracted significant criticism. On August 17, 1903, the New York Times accused Couney of running a "baby farm," sparking outrage from organizations like the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Couney defended his work in court, asserting, "I had saved 50 of the 52 babies I was brought in Buffalo, and so far, 18 of the 19 babies brought to me in New York" (23:36). Nevertheless, ethical questions lingered regarding the exploitation of vulnerable infants for public display.

Expansion, Legacy, and Impact on Neonatology

Couney expanded his exhibits to multiple amusement parks, including Dreamland in Coney Island and Atlantic City. His collaborations with medical professionals like Dr. Julius Hess led to the establishment of dedicated intensive care units for premature infants. Holly Fry observes, "Thanks to his work, the public perception of premature babies also started to shift away from this idea of hopeless weaklings who might be better off if they were allowed to die, to fighters who could thrive if they just had the right kind of care" (36:08).

Conclusion: A Complex Legacy

Dr. Martin Couney’s legacy is multifaceted. While he undeniably advanced the care of premature infants and influenced the field of neonatology, his methods raised ethical concerns about the commercialization and public exhibition of fragile newborns. Holly Fry concludes, "It's [Couney's legacy] really complicated. There are just so many holes and some outright falsehoods in the backstory that he told people about himself" (35:32).

Notable Quotes

• Holly Fry (05:17): "Today, when people use the phrase premature baby, they typically mean a baby who was born before 37 weeks gestation. But during the time that we're talking about today, that term was a lot more nebulous."

• Martin Cooney (08:55): "Although this test went really well, Tarnier's invention wasn't really able to be put into widespread use."

• Martin Cooney (16:28): "According to Couney, he went to Berlin on Boudin's instruction to run the child hatchery at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition. But none of that seems to actually be true."

• Martin Cooney (23:36): "I had saved 50 of the 52 babies I was brought in Buffalo, and so far, 18 of the 19 babies brought to me in New York."

• Holly Fry (35:32): "It's [Couney's legacy] really complicated. There are just so many holes and some outright falsehoods in the backstory that he told people about himself."

Final Thoughts

Dr. Martin Couney's baby sideshows represent a unique intersection of medical innovation and public spectacle. While his efforts undeniably saved thousands of premature infants' lives, the ethical implications of his methods continue to provoke debate. This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class provides a comprehensive exploration of Couney's impact, blending historical context with critical analysis to offer listeners a nuanced understanding of this fascinating chapter in medical history.

Transcript

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[Holly Fry]

In our recent episode on Exim, Clement Stafford, we mentioned her daughter describing herself as Asheville, North Carolina's first incubator baby. Well, we have a whole episode related to the development of incubators and their use in caring for premature babies. It's about when babies in incubators were used as sideshow attractions at theme parks and expositions.

[Martin Cooney]

This came out on November 6, 2019. We had just come back from a tour and I was a little bit under the weather. I thought about not rerunning it for that reason, but really it's the most obvious just for the first couple of minutes of the episode. So enjoy.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Martin Cooney]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Martin Cooney]

We are just back from our Denver and Chicago leg of our tour and I have a little post tour vocal uncertainty.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I think we're both in torch song territory. Mine alternately sounds fine and then like garbage. So brace.

[Martin Cooney]

Yes. So if you've never heard our show before, this is amazing. Maybe not what we typically sound like all of the time. Anyway, we have gotten so, so many requests for today's topic, including one that came in from our listener Alyssa while I was writing the episode. That never happens. Normally when people say, have you ever thought about doing an episode on whatever, fill in the blank. Like 99% of the time the answer is, I don't know, maybe. Like, there's so much stuff to think about. But this was a case where she said, have you ever thought of doing this? And I was like, I'm working on it right now. So way back when we heard from Angela, Dan, Kristen and Harrison all requesting this topic. And then it briefly came up in our past episode on the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball team. By total coincidence, after we recorded that episode, but before it came out, the other podcast, sawbones, put out an episode on the topic. So then we were just flooded with message about folks saying, hey, Sawbones just did this. I lost track of everyone requesting it. And anyway, the point is, today we are talking about Martin Cooney and his incubator sideshows, which came complete with premature babies in them. I've heard people pronounce his names his name a couple of different ways. I've heard some people say county and I've heard some people say Cooney, but Cooney seems to be the more common from a medical ethics standpoint. This is complicated. Cooney was turning premature babies and their care into a sideshow attraction. And for a while he was also making a lot of money off of that. And there are a lot of question marks around his background and the experience that he had and whether he was qualified to be doing this at all. But at the same time, premature babies really were not getting a lot of care otherwise. And the general sense among the mainstream medical community was that there was really nothing to be done for them. So he was definitely saving babies lives. Also, some question marks around what he was doing.

[Holly Fry]

Today, when people use the phrase premature baby, they typically mean a baby who was born before 37 weeks gestation. But during the time that we're talking about today, that term was a lot more nebulous. It did include babies who had been born before 37 weeks, but it also included babies who had a low birth weight for some other reason, along with babies who maybe had some sort of illness, disability, or developmental issue.

[Martin Cooney]

Regardless of the cause, these babies were often lumped together and described as weaklings. And for the most part, doctors and hospitals in the 19th century in Europe and North America just didn't provide them any kind of specialized care. Parents were instructed to keep them warm and to hope or pray for the best, but that was just about it. And then underlying this was an attitude that these babies who were not very strong at their birth would just grow up to be adults who also weren't very strong if they survived. So there was this idea that maybe it was better to just let nature take its course.

[Holly Fry]

Of course, this is an ableist mindset, and it sounds really callous today, but at the time, infant mortality in general was quite high, even among babies who were born at full term and seemed initially to be healthy. And as we talked about in our previous episode on Virginia Apgar, well into the 20th century, there was a lot more medical focus on the person giving birth than on the newborn baby. In the 19th century, the death of a baby was a tragedy, but it was almost an expected tragedy, especially among premature babies.

[Martin Cooney]

The development that started to turn this perception around was the incubator. Historically, people have known that babies need to be kept warm, but not too hot. This is especially true for preterm infants who have less body fat and just aren't able to regulate their own body temperature as well. People have used things like heated rocks or bricks, or water bottles, blankets, candles, and their own body heat to try to keep babies warm.

[Holly Fry]

And there have also been cultures that recognize that premature babies in particular needed to be kept consistently warm. As Tracy was working on this, she found an article from back in the 1940s. So the language there was really outdated, but it described native people in Siberia wrapping babies in the skin of a sea bird with the feathers turned inward, and then keeping this sort of pouch that they had create suspended over a very small flame. And that article also discussed indigenous people in Mozambique keeping preterm babies wrapped up and placed in a large pot that was warmed up in the sun. Both of these techniques were essentially working as incubators.

[Martin Cooney]

But the incubator, as we think of it today, was first developed in France in the 19th century by obstetrician Stephane Tarnier. At the time, France as a nation was very concerned about its birth rate, which was a lot lower than some of its neighbors. This was leading to very practical worries about whether France would have enough soldiers and laborers in the future. So people were looking for ways not just to increase the birth rate, but also to protect the lives of the babies that were already being born.

[Holly Fry]

Tarnier got the idea after seeing incubators being used to hatch eggs at a zoo. His first incubator was not very sophisticated. It was basically a hot water bottle under a wooden chamber with a glass top. But it got the job done. In 1881, he tested it out in a Paris maternity ward, focusing on babies who weighed less than 2,000 grams. That's a little under four and a half pounds at birth. He reported that being kept in the incubator cut their mortality rate in half.

[Martin Cooney]

Although this test went really well, Tarnier's invention wasn't really able to be put into widespread use. Most babies in France were being born at home, not in the hospital. So hospitals set up premature baby wards to receive these babies after their parents brought them in. But most of the time, at least a day or two passed between the birth and the arrival at the hospital. So by the time they were admitted, these babies had been just too cold for too long. Sometimes they had also contracted some kind of illness. And so their mortality rate continued to be quite High.

[Holly Fry]

In 1889, physician Alexandre Lyon patented an improved version of the incubator. Like Tarnier's incubator, it heated a chamber from below, but it also had a ventilation system that drew fresh air into the incubator and thermostat to regulate the temperature.

[Martin Cooney]

These devices were expensive, and it was also expensive for a hospital to employ a 24 hour medical staff to care for the babies that needed them. This was especially true since most people weren't giving birth in hospitals. So for the most part, hospitals weren't adding premature infant care to existing labor and delivery wards that were already fully staffed. They were having to start from scratch. It could be weeks or months before these babies were ready to go home. So words for premature infants also needed to employ wet nurses to keep them fed.

[Holly Fry]

So to make this level of care affordable, Lyon established a number of premature infant charities in France's major cities. And while those were in operation, they treated as many as 8,000 infants, with roughly 7,500 of them surviving. These facilities were funded by charitable contributions by the cities where they were operating and by the admission fees that people paid to come and look at these babies.

[Martin Cooney]

These incubators soon spread outside of France, as did the idea of putting the incubators and the babies inside them on display. On May 1, 1896, the Kinderbrudenstalt, or child hatchery, opened at the Berlin Industrial Exposition. This included six incubators that were open for public view, along with housing for the medical staff and the wet nurses who were working there later on.

[Holly Fry]

Martin Couney said that the child hatchery in Berlin was where he got his start in working with incubators and premature babies. He said that he was from Alsace Lorraine, France, and had studied medicine at University of Leipzig before continuing his education under the tutelage of French pediatrician Pierre Boudin. Boudin was one of the leading authorities on the care of premature infants. He even went on to write the first major textbook on the subject, which was titled the Feeding and Hygiene of Premature and Full Term Infants.

[Martin Cooney]

So according to Couney, he went to Berlin on Boudin's instruction to run the child hatchery at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition. Couney said that it had been his idea to put these babies in the incubators rather than just showcasing empty incubators as an example of a new technology. He also said he worked with Empress Augusta Victoria to get approval for premature babies from Berlin's hospitals to be cared for in this exhibit.

[Holly Fry]

But none of that seems to actually be true. And we are going to get to more about Cooney and all of that after we first pause for a little sponsor break.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

September 1979. Virginia's top prison band, Edge of Daybreak, is about to record their debut album behind bars in just five hours. Okay, we're rolling. One, two, three, four. I'm Jamie Petras, music and culture writer. For the past five years, I've been talking to the band's three surviving members. They're out of prison now and in their 70s, their past behind them. But they also have some unfinished business.

[Martin Cooney]

The everyday rake, Eyes of Love was.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Supposed to been followed up by another album. It's a story about the liberating power of music, the American justice system, and ultimately, second chances. Listen to Soul incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's chief product officer. If you're just as curious as I am about the way things are built, the insights behind what it takes to a world renowned product, then tune in to my podcast Building One. There's so much to learn, like how Patagonia innovates with its supply chain. We had to go out to farmers and convince them it was really damn hard. Or the way Adobe thinks about the first interaction somebody has with Photoshop. I was always so fascinated by how people navigate and find their way. Ever wanted to know how Nike builds emotion into the Jordan brand? You have to be obsessed with the current state of the human condition and it doesn't stop there. What about how Glean reinvented knowledge? Search with AI you can learn about how a Michelin star chef is redesigning seeds for flavor and how Pixar is nurturing a creative culture. Listen to Building One on the iHeartRadio app, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

People are forming opinions of you even before you log into the Zoom or walk into the room, and so you really have to think about what is it I want to display? You don't plant a garden and then just walk away and expect it to thrive. You are in there pulling out the weeds. You're pruning it, you're watering it.

[Martin Cooney]

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[Martin Cooney]

According to Martin Cooney's immigration documents, he was born in Croatian on December 30, 1869. Today that's Croatian Poland, but at the time it was in Prussia. Couney's name at birth was Michael Cohen. He and his family were Jewish, as was about a third of the population of the town where they were living.

[Holly Fry]

From there, his upbringing and background get really unclear. The backstory that he told people about when and where he was born was all over the place. He is listed on the manifest of a ship that came to the US in 1888 when he was 19, but by 1897 he was in London, having partnered with entrepreneur Samuel Schenkhein to create an incubator exhibition for the Victorian Era Exhibition.

[Martin Cooney]

Although Cooney claimed that he had studied medicine in Leipzig, which logically would have happened between 1888 and 1897, there's no evidence that he studied at the University of Leipzig or at any other university in Europe, or that he continued his studies with Pierre Boudin.

[Holly Fry]

There's also no evidence that Couney had anything to do with the child hatchery in Berlin, although it seems as though he and Schenkhein licensed that endeavor from Alexandre Lyon when they started working on a similar attraction at the Victorian Era Exhibition.

[Martin Cooney]

When Cooney and Schenkein launched the Victorian Era Exhibition incubator display, incubators had been used in France and other parts of the Western European continent for years, but they were still pretty new. In England, attitudes about parenting were a little different. Parents were just not as receptive to the idea. When Couney and Schenkein had trouble convincing parents to place their babies in the exhibition, they brought newborns across the Channel from France under the care of nurse Louise Recht, who spent a lot of her career working with Couney's exhibits.

[Holly Fry]

At least 200,000 people visited the incubators at the Victorian Era Exhibition. It got a favorable write up in the Lancet. Although the Lancet's coverage of these types of exhibitions wasn't always positive, Cooney and Schenkhein also wrote a letter to the Lancet in 1897 warning of the dangers of competing shows that were not affiliated with them and had no medical staff. Couney's name on this particular letter is printed as Martin Coney C O N.

[Martin Cooney]

E Y. Martin Cooney seems to have evolved into Martin Cooney by the time Cooney started an incubator exhibition at the Trans Mississippi and International Exhibition, also known as the Omaha World's Fair. That was in 1898, although at that point he hadn't changed his name legally yet.

[Holly Fry]

While in Omaha, Cooney was approached by the Krug Cabinet Beer Company about supplying beer for the exhibit's wet nurses. Folks have long believed that beer can help improve milk supply, something that seems to be connected to one of the polysaccharides in the barley rather than to the alcohol content. The Omaha Daily Bee published a quote by Dr. Martin Cooney. That quote we take pleasure in stating we have used Krug Cabb bottled beer consistently for milk producing qualities. We can cheerfully recommend it to all nursing mothers.

[Martin Cooney]

On November 2, 1898, while still in Omaha, Cooney was naturalized as a US citizen. At that time he testified that he'd been living in Nebraska continually for the previous 10 years, and that was clearly not true since, at minimum, he had been in London for the Victorian exhibition.

[Holly Fry]

Cooney's next major exhibition was the Pan American Exposition in 1901, which had 18 incubators by that point. At least one hospital was also trying to use incubators for premature infant care. That was Chicago lying in Hospital, where an incubator station was opened in 1900 by Joseph B. Dele. This station had some of the same struggles as the first French hospitals using incubators did back in the 1880s. They were expensive to buy, run and staff, and most of the babies who needed them were being born at home. By contrast, the attraction at the Expo went very well, although the exposition itself was marred by the assassination of President.

[Martin Cooney]

McKinley in 1903, Cooney started the baby exhibit that he's most famous for. It was his first permanent exhibition at Luna park on Coney Island. This was permanent in that he continued to run it for decades, but the park itself was seasonal, so during the winter months any babies who were still there were either sent home or to hospitals along with Their incubators and any incubators not in use were put into storage.

[Holly Fry]

The Luna park exhibition was similar to all of Cooney's previous exhibitions. It had space for the incubators themselves, which people could view through a window after buying a ticket. The space had housing for the medical staff and the wet nurses. The staff included Dr. Solomon Fishel and nurses Louise Recht and Annabel Segner.

[Martin Cooney]

But unlike earlier exhibits, this one also had an exam room that was also viewable through a window. So in addition to seeing the babies and their incubators, the audience would also see some of their medical examinations and other care. Their parents weren't charged anything for the baby's care, and no premature baby was turned away. The incubator displays had always had kind of an educational component explaining what the incubators were and how they worked and why the babies needed them. And this continued at Luna park as well.

[Holly Fry]

For the most part, the care that the babies were getting was pretty basic. Even when Pierre Boudin's textbook on premature infant care was published in 1901, most of its guidelines boiled down to keeping the baby warm and fed and preventing infections. Breast milk was the ideal food, which is why there were wet nurses on staff. If breast milk was not available for some reason, sterilized cow's milk could be used as a substitute for babies who were too weak to suckle. The nurses used droppers or tubes into the stomach or through the nose at the same time.

[Martin Cooney]

This was definitely a carnival attraction. It was located on a boardwalk in an amusement park. Although Cooney had strict rules for cleanliness and hygiene and the diets of the wet nurses, the surrounding area was noisy and dirty. Sometimes the exhibits around the babies were a little racy. The staff also included barkers who tried to draw in an audience from outside and people who sold tickets for 25 cents apiece.

[Holly Fry]

And there was definitely some theatricality involved in the display itself. The babies were often dressed in clothes that were too big for them, with an oversized bow around their middle and that made them look even smaller than they already were, Nurse Recht was fond of putting a diamond ring from her index finger around a baby's wrist where it would dangle like a bracelet.

[Martin Cooney]

Even though Cooney was providing life saving care to these premature infants, and even though everyone seems to have taken as fact that he really was a medical doctor. The Luna park exhibit A lot of criticism. On August 17, 1903, an article in the New York Times accused Cooney of running a baby farm. John D. Lindsay, who was President of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, became an outspoken critic of Cooney and of baby sideshows.

[Holly Fry]

Eventually, the matter went to court and Cooney testified that he had saved 50 of the 52 babies he was brought in Buffalo, and so far, 18 of the 19 babies brought to him in New York, the Luna park sideshow was allowed to continue.

[Martin Cooney]

On August 31, 1903, Michael Cohen legally changed his name to Martin Arthur Cooney. A little less than a month later, on September 26, he married nurse Annabel Segner, who continued to work with him at the baby exhibit.

[Holly Fry]

In 1904, the Luna park nursery opened for the season, and another location, virtually identical, opened at Dreamland Amusement park, which was also on Coney Island. A third amusement park location later opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

[Martin Cooney]

Throughout all of this, other people were continuing to use incubators with living babies as exhibits and sideshows and fairs and expositions. People who didn't have anything to do with Martin Cooney. Cooney wrote about these as inferior imitations of his own idea, even though it really seems like he lifted this idea from Alexandra Leonard.

[Holly Fry]

Some of these other exhibits ran without incident. But in 1904, disaster struck at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also called the St. Louis World's Fair. This was the one that we talked about in our previous episode on the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball team. There was an outbreak of diarrhea in the exhibit and the mortality rate at the exhibit approached 50%. A doctor was brought in to take charge, and Cooney was careful distress that he had not had anything to do with that exhibit.

[Martin Cooney]

Although Cooney continued to arrange and run baby incubator attractions at expositions, the amusement park locations were really a big part of the rest of his career. And we'll get into more of that after another quick sponsor break.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

September 1979. Virginia's top prison band, Edge of Daybreak, is about to record their debut album behind bars in just five hours. Okay, we're rolling. One, two, three, four. I'm Jamie Petras, music and culture writer. For the past five years, I've been talking to the band's three surviving members. They're out of prison now and in their 70s, their past behind them. But they also have some unfinished business.

[Martin Cooney]

The Air to Day race, Eyes of.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Love was supposed to have been followed.

[Martin Cooney]

Up by another album.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

It's a story about the liberating power of music, the American justice system, and ultimately, second chances. Listen to Soul incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarke.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry. Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.

[Holly Fry]

We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle. Yep, that's a fact.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime, from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching, to see what, if anything, might look different through today's perspective.

[Holly Fry]

And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories. There's one for every story we tell.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Joy Here you may know me from therapy for Black girls, where we're celebrating 400 episodes of the podcast. That's a whole lot of girl Me Too moments. For years, we've had deep, thoughtful and inspiring conversations about Black women's mental health, and now we're celebrating this milestone in a big way. In this special episode, Peloton Yogi Chelsea Jackson Roberts shares how yoga has taught her to stay grounded and present while balancing motherhood and self care.

[Holly Fry]

I can't control my partner. I can't control my child.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I can't control anyone outside the way that I govern myself in this world. And the celebration doesn't stop there. We'll continue this milestone with Dr. Lauren Mims, who joins me to discuss the powerful yet sometimes challenging transition from girlhood to womanhood for Black femmes. Together we explore how we navigate this transformative journey with strength and grace. Black girlhood is giggling. It's sisterhood. But it is also, I think, focusing on learning how to cope with really difficult things that are happening. With insights like these, this 400th episode celebration is one for the books. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Holly Fry]

Love at first swipe? I highly doubt it.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

What's your biggest red flag? No, no, no. What's your ultimate green flag? These days, reality TV and social media have us thinking love is instant. We're marrying strangers at first sight. We're finding love through walls. Or we're even judging people by balloon pops. But what really makes a relationship last? On this episode of Dope Labs, poet, author and relationship expert Young Pueblo breaks down the psychology and biology of loving better and he provides eye opening insights and advice that we all need.

[Holly Fry]

It's a big realization moment that you should not be postponing your happiness. Like your greatest happiness is not necessarily going to like come from a relationship. Your partner, they should add to your happiness, but your happiness is really coming from within you.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Listen to Dope labs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Martin Cooney]

In the years after Martin Cooney arranged his first incubator attraction, he started holding periodic reunions which would bring together babies and young children who had spent their early months in one of his incubators. Now, of course, thriving and healthy, the large majority of premature infants that he cared for went on to grow and.

[Holly Fry]

Thrive at the same time. His whole career was full of ups and downs. For example, in 1905 the Infant Incubator Company was established with Couney's colleagues, Dr. Solomon Fishel and Samuel Schenkine as co directors. That same year, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children tried to lobby for legislation that would make the exhibition of babies in incubators a misdemeanor.

[Martin Cooney]

On January 29, 1907, Cooney's wife, Annabel gave birth to a daughter about six weeks early. Since it was January, the amusement parks were closed for the season, so Cooney got somebody to retrieve one of the exhibit incubators from storage. This daughter, Hildegard Francis, survived her infancy and went on to become a nurse working in her father's exhibits. She was also dogged by rumors that she wasn't actually Martin and Annabelle's child, but was a premature baby that somebody else had abandoned.

[Holly Fry]

On May 27, 1911, a fire broke out at Dreamland Amusement Park. As always, there were staff members on duty at the incubator exhibition, which was successfully evacuated, but the New York Times published an incorrect report saying that all of the babies had been killed. John D. Lindsay used this as fodder to renew his criticisms of the sideshows, although they did continue to operate.

[Martin Cooney]

In 1914, Cooney established an incubator display at White City Amusement park in Chicago, and there he met Dr. Julius Hess. Hess would go on to establish the first dedicated intensive care unit for premature infants in the United States. Hess didn't really approve of the theatricality that was involved with Couney's exhibits, but he really regarded Couney as a friend and a colleague When Hess published his textbook Premature and Congenitally Diseased Infants, he had Couney review it beforehand and acknowledged his contributions when it was published. Hess also dedicated another book to Couney in 1928.

[Holly Fry]

Together, Hess and Couney planned a state of the art incubator facility for the Chicago Century of progress in 1933. While Cooney's earlier incubator exhibits had included some education, this was more like a functioning research institute, with the staff specifically studying the care the babies were receiving and its effects and outcomes. Hess and Cooney's medical teams were both involved, so each team learned from the other. At about the same time, more hospitals were starting to establish dedicated facilities for preterm infant care. So this work being done at the Century of Progress was contributing to a growing medical field.

[Martin Cooney]

The next year, in 1934, William Randolph Hearst approached Cooney with a request to travel to Canada, where quintuplets had been born in Ontario. These five babies came to be known as the Dionne Quints, and Cooney declined to get involved with their career. The reason that he gave publicly was that his existing patients needed him. He just didn't have time with his other work. But it was also because he didn't think these babies were likely to survive. In his experience, in cases of multiple births, at most, only one baby survived.

[Holly Fry]

All five of the Dionne quintuplets did survive their infancy, and we have gotten a lot of requests to talk about them on the podcast. It's kind of like the never ending request line. But two of them are still living and we don't generally do biographies of living persons. And they have also said pretty clearly that they just want their privacy. And a big part of their story is their privacy being taken away from them from their infancy and childhoods. That is why we are not doing an episode on the Dionne Quintuplet. So, yes, it is fascinating and we understand the curiosity, but we're respecting their privacy.

[Martin Cooney]

Yeah, they've pretty clearly said they would just like to be left alone. In the late 1930s, things were pretty difficult for Couney. His wife Annabelle died. He was also aware of events in Germany as Hitler came to power. And he knew that his Jewish friends and family in Europe were at great risk. During the late 1930s, he arranged for about 15 people to leave Europe, paying their way and handling their paperwork.

[Holly Fry]

Then Couney tried to arrange another incubator sideshow at the New York World's Fair in 1939. But by this point, the novelty of incubators had started to wear off. The exhibit just didn't draw the kinds of crowds that previous efforts had. And for the first time, Cooney lost money. The show was renewed for a second season, with Cooney hoping that he could make up for the earlier loss. But the opposite happened. The whole thing was financially disastrous.

[Martin Cooney]

It was not going well at this point for the more permanent locations either. And the two remaining amusement park attractions, which were at Luna park and Atlantic City, both closed in 1943. At that point, Cooney retired. Also, more and more premature care wards were opening around the United States by this point. It was something that paused a little during World War II, but then resumed afterward.

[Holly Fry]

Cooney died on March 1, 1950. He had become known at that point as the Incubator Doctor. And it's estimated that during his career, his exhibitions cared for at least 8,000 babies and saved the lives of at least 6,500 of them. But when talking about it to the media, he always stressed that he shouldn't get all the credit, that the doctors, nurses and wet nurses on staff were critical to the work.

[Martin Cooney]

Cooney's legacy is really complicated. There are just so many holes and some outright falsehoods in the backstory that he told people about himself. And we really have no idea what his credentials were when he started his first exhibit. There's just no documentation that he had the medical degree that he said he had. Although we could logically conclude that he changed his name to try to avoid antisemitism. We don't actually know what motivated him to do it or why he was just so cagey and inconsistent about what his background was, but he definitely dedicated.

[Holly Fry]

Most of his adult life to taking care of babies that doctors didn't think could or should be helped. And thanks to his work, the public perception of premature babies also started to shift away from this idea of hopeless weaklings who might be better off if they were allowed to die, to fighters who could thrive if they just had the right kind of care.

[Martin Cooney]

Some writers have framed Cooney's work as an opposition to the eugenics movement. And while it's true that the eugenics movement approved of the idea of allowing the so called weak to, quote, die out, Cooney also reinforced some of that same mindset with how he talked about these babies. He stressed that they were going to grow up, quote, healthy and normal and not to be weaklings. He implied that if they were going to grow up to be ill or disabled, he wouldn't be doing what he was doing.

[Holly Fry]

There are also arguments about whether Couney's use of incubators as a sideshow attraction delayed their mainstream medical acceptance. That one's a little harder to pin down. On the one hand, as Couney and his staff were working with these children, they were learning and developing new skills and getting better at it over time and influencing the work of some of the United States earliest neonatologists. But it is also entirely possible that doctors just didn't want to be associated with something that was so closely connected to sideshows and amusement parks, and that it made the whole technology seem a little bit suspicious.

[Martin Cooney]

And of course, there have been huge advances in premature baby care since Couney's death. They are largely outside the scope of this podcast, but especially for babies born very early, it's no longer a matter of just trying to keep them warm and fed and preventing illnesses. There are a lot of other medical interventions that can take place, and that has led to a whole other ethical debate about when to resuscitate premature babies and what level of care and intervention that they should receive. That's Martin Cooney and his baby sideshows, which are fascinating and also kind of complicated topic.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Martin Cooney]

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is historypodcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Honestly, Honestly, Honestly, no one wants to think about hiv, but there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like prep. PREP stands for Pre Exposure Prophylactic, and it means routinely taking prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it. Prep can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs, though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices. Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention Options and visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more. Sponsored by Gilead 45 years ago, a Virginia soul band called the Edge of Daybreak recorded their debut album, Behind Bars. Record collectors consider it a masterpiece. The band's surviving members are long out of prison, but they say they have some unfinished business.

[Martin Cooney]

The Edge of Daybreak Eyes of Love.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Was supposed to have been followed up by another album. Listen to Soul incarcerated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey sis, it's Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls. We've had 400 episodes of Conversations Growth and healing. So we're celebrating. Join us for a special episode with internationally recognized yogi Chelsea Jackson Roberts as she shares wisdom on mindfulness, movement and motherhood. I waited later to have children and I still have exactly what I knew that I wanted. You don't want to miss this special episode. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders? My podcast this Is Working can help with that. Here's advice from Google CMO Lorraine Twohill on how to treat AI like a partner.

[Holly Fry]

I see AI as an incredible co pilot. You may use different tools or toys to get the work done, but AI is just the latest flavor of that. You're still the judge of what good looks like.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor in chief, on my podcast this is Working Leaders Share Strategies for Success. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

Or wherever you get your podcast.