May 4, 2009: Preemie sideshow! - 0 Comments

"In 1896, Martin Conoey designed the incubator, a device developed to aid premature babies. . . In a bizarre combination of medicine and sideshow, Cooney gathered hundreds of premature babies (they were easy to obtain because doctors assumed premature infants would die), put them into incubators, and exhibited them at various expositions and fairs in America and Europe."

- Meredith Small, Our Babies, Ourselves, 1998.