Newspaper Article

Once a sideshow, former preemies praise doctor years later

Eltman, Frank

2015

Overview

[Martin Couney] died in 1950, shortly after incubators finally came into wider use. Horn and others who owe their lives to him want their stories told so the doctor's curious tale - one that would cause outrage by today's standards - doesn't die with them. \"He said: Well that's impossible; she's alive now. We have to do something for her,' [Barbara Horn] said. \"My father wrapped me in a towel and took me in a cab to the incubator; I went to Dr. Couney. I stayed with him quite a few days. Almost five months. Couney opened his first exhibit with \"live babies at Coney Island's Luna Park in 1903. By the 1920s, the incubators were kept in a Hansel-and-Gretel-like cottage decorated with the image of a stork overlooking a nest of cherubs. And in the 1930s, he took his incubator babies to the world's fairs in New York and Chicago, where the display was on the midway next to the show of burlesque fan dancer Sally Rand. Couney ended the sideshows in 1943.

• Publisher: Charleston Newspapers
• Subject: Couney, Martin / Heinisch, Carol Boyce / Horn, Barbara