I found this book to be fascinating, although a little dry to get through at times. Dr. Couney was a Coney Island doctor who saved many premature babies lives by putting them on display in a sideshow. With his methods, he was able to save countless babies. It was impressive to hear of the methods that he was able to develop over 100 years ago!

Martin Couney was not a person I was familiar with prior to reading this book. In fact, I had given little thought to the existence of incubators and their use for premature babies, but the blurb of this book fascinated me. The idea of incubators being part of a side show at Coney Island and the like was almost unbelievable.

As I read more, my fascination grew deeper and deeper. The idea that doctors at hospitals would recommend new parents taking their children to an entertainment exhibit for medical care was astounding, but the story itself was heartwarming. It is clear that Martin Couney loved babies. Providing care that was well before its time--breast feeding and skin-to-skin, not to mention the incubators, saved upwards of 6,500 lives.

I found the contents of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney to be compulsively readable, and I had trouble putting the book down at times. My only criticism of the book is in the way it was constructed. The time line was non existent. Raffel jumped back and forth in years and decades with no apparent method. By the middle of the book, I was hopelessly lost as far as Martin Couney's timeline, and the by the end, I had no idea why the story was told in the manner in which it was. I would love to know if there was a reasoning behind it, as I personally couldn't grasp it. Had I not struggled with this aspect of the book so much, it could have easily been a five star read for me.

After immigrating to the States, Martin Couney set up an amusement show where he displayed premature babies in incubators. In a time where premature babies often died, Couney was able to keep them alive, without charging the parents a dime for his services. Decades after his death, researchers discovered that, despite his claims, Martin Couney was not a doctor, and had no training in neonatal care.

I thought Couney was a very interesting character. His story was remarkable and extraordinary. I could have done without reading about the author's search to uncover info about Couney, it took away from the fluidity of the book and didn't really add anything to the story. Overall, a decent book, but not one I would reread.

Because of my many years of work at the Coney Island museum, I knew more than most about this weird little piece of history. Most people, when told about it get upset about the idea of babies on display as a sideshow attraction, but they always calm down when explain that Martin Couney managed to save the unsaveable - in enormous numbers, and was resourceful enough to be able to have it be self-funding and extremely effective.
Dawn Raffel's enjoyment of following little research wormholes comes through in her writing. Her initial interest was sparked by a diary entry of her father's, accounting his visit to the incubator attraction at a world's fair. I have seen it happen and experienced it myself, when one tiny thread leads to another, which leads to another.
Martin Couney, in some ways seemed to have the habits of a typical showman. There is some ambiguity about his real name, his place of birth, and whether or not he had the credentials to do what he did. What was clear though, is that he was dedicated to saving these babies (even if he had little previous personal interaction with infants), and by opening up his own attractions, saved somewhere near 85% of the babies put into his care as compared to the 25% that survived in the hospitals.
It is a fascinating, tiny piece of history that had a huge impact on the lives of thousands, even if in a less-than-conventional setting.

The Strange Case of Dr. Couney is the fascinating tale of a weird event in US history. I loved learning all about it and the world's fair.

This was a trip from start to finish. Hard to believe that premature babies were once a side-show exhibit, but truth really is stranger than fiction. I didn't mind that Raffel jumped around time-line wise in telling the story of Dr. Martin Couney, because her writing was so accessible. I breezed through the book in a matter of days. I do wish there was more on Couney so we could have had more definitive answers about his life, but I applaud Raffel's research and dedication to tracking down the still-living Incubator Babies and their stories.

It is easy to assume that technical progress has always moved ahead in a linear fashion. Hospitals get a new technology to help patients, which starts out fairly primitive and then gets refined over the years. “The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies” proves that this simplistic view is far from reality.

Martin Couney was a showman who saved babies’ lives. Dawn Raffel first introduces us to Couney on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, but the story then jumps to the 1934 Incubator Station at the Century of Progress in Chicago. In each case Couney provided top-notch care to babies that were brought to him because they were literally given no hope of survival. This was similar to work being done in France by M. Alexandre Lion, work that led to incubators with regulated temperature, filtered ventilation, and a large viewing window.

Raffel tells the story of Couney in a nonlinear fashion, at one point jumping from 1880 to 1970 in a matter of a few pages. She introduces William Silverman, a doctor in New York, who reads the obituary of Couney in 1950 and remembers seeing the sideshow years before. He is determined to learn all he can about Couney, a task that proves to be endlessly daunting. Raffel tells her own meta-story as well, such as finding some of the “Couney Babies” alive today, including twins who were visited in the sideshow by a young boy who would later marry one of them.

The story of sideshows in America inevitably includes imitators, and unfortunately those that tried to follow in Couney’s footsteps took too many shortcuts. Perhaps most fascinating of all in “The Strange Case of Dr. Couney” are the photographs, showing fairground buildings with huge lettering advertising the incubators, in English or French. Coney Island in New York had a “show” that ran for 40 years.

The heyday of these shows was in the 1920s and 30s which was also the era of eugenics. Displays at one of these same fairs described this “science,” with its emphasis on the strong over the weak. Shocking as it seems today, there had to be an effort over many years just to convince doctors and the public that babies born under 2 pounds were actually worth saving. In spite of the disjointed storytelling, an interesting read.

Dr. Martin Couney, who apparently had not received any official medical training, ran his incubators for premature babies as a side show at several fairs across the country, including Coney Island. His wife Maye and another trained nurse, Louise, helped to care for the infants, whom the hospitals had either given up on or were unable to accommodate. He claimed the survival rate of these preemies was 85%, far exceeding that of the hospitals of the time; there were even reunions held for the adults who had been saved as infants by this unusual man.