The plummeting French birth rate spurred more than a few doctors, including M. Pierre-Constant Budin, who developed successful incubators at Paris Maternité, set the stage for Couney’s later sideshows. But he also pioneered the study and practice of neonatology in America, and some of the 6,500 or so newborns he rescued between 18 are still around to prove it.Īn apprenticeship with Dr. Raffel unearths some fascinating history: Couney lied about his birthplace changed his name (more than once) and may or may not have been a real MD. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies, reexamines Couney’s story. The novelist Dawn Raffel’s new book of nonfiction, The Strange Case of Dr. Whether at Coney Island or Atlantic City, or any number of world’s fairs and amusement parks across America where Couney and his family set up their concession, the preemies that hospitals largely dismissed as “weaklings” got a second chance at life. “Dr.” Martin Couney’s Barnumesque showcase was their best chance. It may have been the “Strangest Place on Earth for Human Tots to Be Fed, Nursed and Cared For,” as the Brooklyn Eagle reported in 1903, but for much of the early-to-mid twentieth century, precious few treatment options were available for premature babies. Madame Recht, their nurse, occasionally wowed the crowds with a special trick: placing her diamond ring around a baby’s wrist.
Tourists strolling along the Coney Island boardwalk in the summertime, circa 1920, would have heard the barkers beckoning: “Don’t forget to see the babies!” Those that heeded the call, perhaps after enjoying a hot dog or a ride on the Cyclone, paid a quarter and stepped into a room where the tiniest of infants, weighing two or three pounds each, were on display in individual incubators.
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