At the time premature babies were considered genetically inferior, and were simply left to fend for themselves and ultimately die.
Dr Martin Couney offered desperate parents a pioneering solution that was as expensive as it was experimental – and came up with a very unusual way of covering the costs.
It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators.
The brainchild of this exhibit was Dr. Martin Couney, an enigmatic figure in the history of medicine. Couney created and ran incubator-baby exhibits on the island from 1903 to the early 1940s.
Behind the gaudy facade, premature babies were fighting for their lives, attended by a team of medical professionals. To see them, punters paid 25 cents. The public funding paid for the expensive care, which cost about $15 a day in 1903 (the equivalent of $405 today) per incubator.
Couney was in the lifesaving business, and he took it seriously. The exhibit was immaculate. When new children arrived, dropped off by panicked parents who knew Couney could help them where hospitals could not, they were immediately bathed, rubbed with alcohol and swaddled tight, then “placed in an incubator kept at 96 or so degrees, depending on the patient. Every two hours, those who could suckle were carried upstairs on a tiny elevator and fed by breast by wet nurses who lived in the building. The rest [were fed by] a funneled spoon. The smallest baby Couney handled is reported to have weighed a pound and a half.
His nurses all wore starched white uniforms and the facility was always spotlessly clean.
An early advocate of breast feeding, if he caught his wet nurses smoking or drinking they were sacked on the spot. He even employed a cook to make healthy meals for them.
The incubators themselves were a medical miracle, 40 years ahead of what was being developed in America at that time.
Each incubator was made of steel and glass and stood on legs, about 5ft tall. A water boiler on the outside supplied hot water to a pipe running underneath a bed of mesh, upon which the baby slept.
Race, economic class, and social status were never factors in his decision to treat and Couney never charged the parents for the babies care.The names were always kept anonymous, and in later years the doctor would stage reunions of his “graduates”.
According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”
Throughout his decades of saving babies, Couney understood there were better options. He tried to sell, or even donate, his incubators to hospitals, but they didn’t want them. He even offered all his incubators to the city of New York in 1940, but was turned down.
In a career spanning nearly half a century he claimed to have saved nearly 6,500 babies with a success rate of 85 per cent, according to the Coney Island History
In 1943, Cornell New York Hospital opened the city’s first dedicated premature infant station. As more hospitals began to adopt incubators and his techniques, Couney closed the show at Coney Island. He said his work was done.
Today, one in 10 babies born in the United States is premature, but their chance of survival is vastly improved—thanks to Couney and the carnival babies.
A nutrition expert has revealed the rules to weight loss from around the world -including eating seven pieces of fruit and veg and fish three-times-a-day.
George Hamlyn-Williams, based in Nottingham, is the principal dietitian from The Hospital Group and following research that puts the UK’s obesity rate ten times higher than countries such as China, he turned to several countries’ nutritional guidelines to see what they were doing differently.
He looked into diet recommendations from countries including Japan, Italy and Norway and pointed out which recommendations should be followed and which should be avoided.
He pointed out, for instance, that Japan’s recommendation to add more fish to the diet, up to three portions a day, was sound nutritional advice, but said that Italy’s recommendation to eat seven biscuits a week was ‘ambiguous.’
He revealed exclusively to Femail his findings and ten of his dos and don’ts when it comes to weight loss and nutrition from around the world.
Oh come on! They’d have to learn how the body works with foods, herbs and spices to heal itself. Big ask for a legal drug pusher!
In fairness to those who would like to do the right thing, ask them how much leeway they are given in trying recommendations different from the medical mafia proscribind drugging.
And how many patients walk in wanting a pill for a “quick fix” and are not prepared to contemplate a lifestyle change.
The “System”, the public, the drug companies and medical education all work hand in hand to produce the disaster we have at present.
Make sure you do not brink pork products into Australia from overseas as more than a quarter of the world’s pigs have been wiped out and there is little authorities can do about it.
Some more intersting data on how probiotics affect different elements of our health and disposition.
Our mental acuity and ability to trust that inner voice is intimately connected to our physiological condition and the physical health of the gut. Increasing research into the psycho-neuro-gut connection and new findings on this interaction show just how interconnected our mental health, brain health, gut health and immune systems are. It also explores the impact of all this on stress and resilience.
Love this. The only bit I would alter is taking the headphones on the walk.
“Push yourself to get up before the rest of the world – start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. Go to the nearest hill with a big coat, your favorite blanket and a scarf and watch the sun rise.
Push yourself to fall asleep earlier – start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable. Lie in your garden, feel the sunshine on your skin.
Get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. Fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. Sit and eat it and do nothing else.
Stretch. Start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. Stretch your fingers. Stretch everything.
Buy a water bottle. Push yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.
Buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. Write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. No detail is too small.
Strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear into the washing machine. wash, then hang them in the sunshine with care. Make your bed in full.
Dig your fingers into the earth, plant a seed. See your success as it grows everyday.
Organize your room. Fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. Light your favorite candle.
Breath. Practice your deep breathing. Ground yourself.
Have a luxurious shower with your favorite music playing. Wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. Lather your whole body in moisturizer, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck. Wash the day’s stress away.
Push yourself to go for a walk. Take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. Smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. Bring your dog and observe the dog’s behavior. Realize you can learn from your dog.
Message old friends with personal jokes. Reminisce. Suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. Push yourself to follow through.
Think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? Find a book about it and read it. There is a book about literally everything.
Become the person you would ideally fall in love with. Let cars merge into your lane when driving. Pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. Stick your tongue out at babies. Help an animal. Compliment people on their cute clothes. Challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day-then two, then a week. Walk with a straight posture. Look people in the eye. Ask people about their story. Talk to acquaintances so they become friends.
Lie in the sunshine. Daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. Open your eyes.