The Child Hatchery

One of modern medicine's strangest monuments disguises itself as an ordinary apartment building in south Minneapolis. It's a plain, two-story structure, built from soft brick painted white, and it stands on the corner of 31st Avenue and 31st Street at the edge of a drowsy, residential neighborhood, not far from the Mississippi River. From 1905 to 1912, the surrounding blocks were occupied by the Wonderland Amusement Park, a 20-acre pleasure ground featuring thrill rides, carnival games, and acrobatic performances. The building on 31st housed one of Wonderland's chief attractions: the Infant Incubator Institute. Here, for a small fee, curiosity seekers could peer through the glass of a half-dozen incubators, each containing a gently roasting human infant, no bigger than a game hen.

The babies were prematurely delivered--born months before their delivery dates. And the Institute (commonly known as the Incubator Flats) represented their best hope for survival. The treatment there was the most progressive available. And it was free of charge, paid for by the long lines of gawkers who jockeyed to see the featherweight babies with heads the size of oranges and feet smaller than bottle caps.

The incubators had a "bright and cheerful appearance," according to a 1906 account in the Minneapolis Journal. "Inside through glass doors, may be seen the baby resting on a fine wire hammock, clean and comfortable and tied around with either a pink or blue ribbon looking for all the world like a dainty bon bon."

A nursery adjoined the incubator room, and here the bon bons were fed fresh breast milk every two hours with spoons especially crafted to fit their nostrils, or with rubber tubes slid down their throats. Upstairs were apartments for the attending doctor and his staff, and for a requisite squadron of lactating nursemaids. Those infants who survived this regimen (which, surprisingly, were the majority) graduated in a matter of weeks or months from the incubator and were reunited with their parents.

The Infant Incubator Institute was one in a network of similar facilities, all owned and operated by Dr. Martin Couney, an unorthodox specialist considered by many to be the father of American neonatology. Born in Europe (France or Poland--the record is uncertain), Couney claimed to have trained in Paris with Pierre Constant Budin, a pioneer of incubator construction and use.

It was at Budin's request, according to Couney's account, that he first exhibited incubator babies, at the 1896 World Exposition in Berlin. Couney's "Kinderbrutanstalt," or child hatchery, sandwiched between the Congo Village and the Tyrolean Yodelers, operated on much the same principal as the facility in Minneapolis, and his wee, ailing patients captured the hearts of all Berlin. The Kinderbrutanstalt was an overnight success. Curious Berliners filed past by the hundreds during its open hours; newspaper reporters vied for Couney's time; nightclub singers even performed topical songs about the hatchery. Doctor Couney had found his calling.

From that day forward he devoted himself to the twin pursuits of amusing the public and saving babies. He soon immigrated to the United States, a natural headquarters for his curious blend of science and showmanship. Then, with the help of his assistant, Madame Louise Recht, and his faithful daughter Hildegarde, Dr. Couney rapidly built an empire of incubator sideshows in city after city. 1897: Earls Court, London. 1898: the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha. 1900: the Paris World Expo. 1901: the Pan American Expo in Buffalo. 1903: Coney Island (Couney's headquarters for 40 years). 1905: Minneapolis. 1906: Portland. 1908: Mexico City. 1910: Rio de Janeiro. 1912: Chicago's White City. 1913: Denver. 1915: Panama Pacific International Expo in San Francisco.

 

Couney was, by all reports, a complex man. He had expensive tastes: a love of fine food, an appreciation for the best wines, and an ambition for elegance and high society. He was deeply divided over the conflicting roles of showman and doctor. He often bristled at his reputation as a carnival barker, and he deeply craved the approval of the medical establishment. "Nothing makes Dr. Couney angrier," wrote A. J. Liebling in a 1939 New Yorker profile, "than the imputation that he is merely a showman. He says 'Everything I do is strictly ethical.'"

Yet he courted the approval of his paying customers just as fiercely. He possessed a canny knack for the mechanics of show business. His barkers, shouting at the passersby, were of the highest quality (at one point they included a young Cary Grant). Madame Recht always wore an oversized diamond ring that she slipped onto the wrists of her wards, to the astonishment of onlookers. The nurses working under her supervision were required to wear bulky clothing to increase the viewers' sense of the babies' diminished size. Couney's enthusiasm for self-promotion extended to his own credentials. Recent scholarship (notably William A. Silverman, MD, in Pediatrics), disproves Couney's chief claim to legitimacy--that he began exhibiting babies at the behest of his teacher, the great Budin.