![]() ![]() ![]() The story of the infant incubator’s journey from Paris Zoo to New York sideshow is a prime example.Īlthough the first incubators used at the Paris Maternité hospital by Dr Tarnier were rudimentary affairs, little more than a wooden box with a lid heated from below by warming pans that needed to be regularly refilled, they prompted a subtle shift in the caring relationships between babies, mothers and nurses. From a modern perspective this state of affairs seems both bizarre and morally wrong, especially as ‘Dr Couney’ was not really a medical doctor at all (despite his claims in later life), yet it highlights the complex relationships between technology, society and medicine where ethics and economics can become entangled in extraordinary ways. He is thought to have saved over 7,000 babies that otherwise would have died. Martin Couney, the self-styled ‘Incubator Doctor’ who ran the exhibit, would spend the next forty years providing perhaps the finest medical care in the world to babies born prematurely, regardless of their race or religion, at exhibitions and amusement parks in America and around the world. ‘Infant Incubators’ offered paying visitors the chance to see tiny premature babies being nursed to health inside gleaming glass and metal incubators. ![]() One of these sideshows exemplified the curious mix of education and entertainment on offer, the ultimate expression of man and machine working in harmony. Lighter educational entertainment could be found on the Midway, including various racist exhibits like the ‘African Village’, alongside shops and sideshows. A visitor to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, could expect to find many examples of technological progress in various grand buildings that hosted exhibitions displaying inventions like electric cars and a medical X-Ray machine. ![]()
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