Actually, in the premature babies life of who is very underweight the baby is
in the incubator so long that the guys continue to develop their underdeveloped
and they only finished developing at birth so when the develop it meant stops
normally it would stop if you were not in the incubator but because you are in
the incubator the babies eyes continue to develop because the hormone growth
hormone that causes them to grow
Actually the room growth hormone growth hormone keeps making the blood vessels
grow and then they form scar tissue on the retina of the eye which causes the
retina to detach and it's just like Moore of retinopathy of caused by diabetes
only it's caused by being premature and die that's what I wanted to say I'm
terrible at dictating so if this didn't come out right we understand why that
happens have a good evening and that's smite that's my two cents worth
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 24, 2015, at 1:46 PM, Marie Reh <cmreh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All:
Thanks for the article Steve.
Today there is a theory that it isn't the oxygen concentration of the incubater
causing the engorged blood vessles, but it is the under developed eye and the
body is causing the blood vessels of the retina to become engorged with blood
causing retinopathy of Prematourity.Dr's are not ready yet though to let go of
the idea of the high concentrations of oxygen causing the retinopathy.
Marie 72
From: msb-alumni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:msb-alumni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Fred Olver
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2015 6:29 PM
To: msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [msb-alumni] Re: Sideshow preemies give thanks Couney's pioneering
efforts saved thousands of lives
Maybe we are to write the author and let him know to check on the statistics of
premature babies which were blinded as a result of being in incubators after
World War II
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 23, 2015, at 4:59 PM, Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ran across this article. Thought it would be of interest since many of us were
premies.
Sideshow preemies give thanks Couney's pioneering efforts saved thousands of
lives By Frank Eltman Associated Press LONG BEACH, N.Y. At age 95, Lucille Horn
often reflects on her long, full life, with a husband and five children, and
how it might not have happened if not for the renegade doctor who put her in a
Coney Island sideshow when she was just days old. Horn is among thousands of
former premature babies whose lives were saved in the early 20th century by Dr.
Martin Couney, a pioneer in the use of incubators who sought acceptance for the
technology by showing it off on carnival midways alongside freak shows and fan
dancers. "Life Begins at the Baby Incubator," read one of the signs at his
displays essentially a ward with babies in the glass cribs that drew huge
crowds at world's fairs, on the Atlantic City boardwalk and Coney Island's Luna
Park. Couney invited desperate parents to bring him their preemies, and he paid
for their care with the 25 cents he charged for admission. 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. Horn was a
twin born prematurely in 1920 in Brooklyn. Her sister had died, and doctors
told her father to hold off on a funeral because Lucille would not survive the
day. "He said: 'Well that's impossible; she's alive now. We have to do
something for her,'? Horn said. "My father wrapped me in a towel and took me in
a cab to the incubator; I went to Dr. Couney. Couney was well known in the
early 1900s for his work in keeping premature babies alive. The German-trained
doctor studied in Paris with Dr. Pierre Budin, who had pioneered the theory of
enclosed incubators, designed to keep babies warm and protect them from germs.
The incubator was first seen in 1896 at the Berlin Exposition, and for the
first time in the U.S. at expositions in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898, and Buffalo,
New York, in 1901. U.S. hospitals were slow to adopt incubators for a variety
of reasons. A 2000 article on the subject in the Journal of Perinatology cited,
among other factors, the belief among early 1900s infant care experts that
premature babies were weaklings who, if they survived, were likely to pass on
that trait to their own children. 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. "We think this is a spectacle. We could never do this
today," said Dr. Richard Schanler, director of neonatal services at Cohen
Children's Medical Center of New York. "But at the time, he was a leader. And I
think we owe a lot of the very basic principles of neonatology to this
gentleman. In the early 1900s, when most births occurred at home, doctors
weren't always in the picture, and premature babies were often written off.
While exact numbers are difficult to determine, medical historians say Couney
estimated he saved 7,500 of the 8,500 children that passed through his
incubators. Writer A.J. Liebling noted in a 1939 New Yorker magazine piece that
Couney became irate at the suggestion he was merely a showman. "All my life I
have been making propaganda for the proper care of preemies, who in other times
were allowed to die," he quoted the doctor as saying. "Everything I do is
strict ethical. Beth Allen was born in 1941, and like Horn, her twin sister was
too small to survive. Her mother, she said, initially rejected putting her
child in one of Couney's incubators, but her father persuaded Couney to talk to
his wife, who acquiesced. "The whole thing is just amazing to me," Allen, who
now lives in Hackensack, New Jersey, told the Associated Press in an interview.
"And the older I get, the more appreciative I am of the opportunity that I was
given to be here to talk to you, and to live a wonderful life that I had. Carol
Boyce Heinisch was an incubator baby at Couney's exhibition in Atlantic City in
1942. Today, the 73-year-old Absecon, New Jersey, woman is a secretary in a law
firm. She has a family photograph of Couney's daughter, Hildegarde, who worked
as his nurse in Atlantic City and held Carol days after she was born. "If it
wasn't for him, maybe I wouldn't have survived," Heinisch said. "I'm just very
grateful for what he did. Barbara Horn recently had her mother record an oral
history of her memories, including meeting Couney as a teenager, when she
thanked him. "It's a story mom has told many times," the younger Horn said.
"Hearing her tell it now, it's given me a new sense of appreciation for
actually how precarious things were for her in the beginning and actually how
gutsy Dr. Couney was." .
