The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies

by Dawn Raffel,
The San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 2018

Coney Island, the Brooklyn Eagle opined in 1903, is “the strangest place on Earth for human tots to be fed, nursed and cared for.” Haranguing passersby to pay “a few shekels” to watch Martin Couney’s sideshow, which featured “preemies” in incubators, the Eagle writer acknowledged, “strikes one as questionable, almost repellent.” Nonetheless, the state-of-the art equipment, the soft, sanitized pillows, the tapered feeding spoon invented by Couney, and the tender care of nurses justified the reporter’s conclusion that the exhibit “was sober and scientific.”