Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Baby Show
Episode Date: December 1, 2017This week, Dr. Sydnee and Justin introduce you to Martin Couney, the (maybe) doctor who put babies into a carnival side show and saved a generation of preemies. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers ...
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Alright, what's wrong with these about?
It's books!
One, two, one, Saul Bones, a mayoral tour of M tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy and I'm Sydney McAroy
You know said you're pregnant. Did you oh yeah?
I wait I guess I sort of
Announced it last time. Yeah, well actually a couple of times you talked about like we turned he clothes anyway
I was just trying to I'm trying not to make a thing
I'm trying not to make a thing. mean, like it's our second time around.
We've done it before, so.
We're old hands.
And, you know, the first time we did make the biggest thing
because we did like all of our episodes
in that time period on pregnancy and babies
and what have you.
Right.
And we didn't leave a lot of meat on the bone.
I would say for the second to go around.
No, we didn't, but there is,
there is one story that kind of relates to this that I've wanted to do for a while. We've had lots of people suggest it and I hadn't read much
into it and I don't know why because now that I'm now that I have, I'm really excited to share it
with you. Well, do you do you know the story of Martin County? No, said I don't, but you probably
would have guessed that. You've known me a while. You sort of know what I'm bringing to the table. You're going to
like this guy. You're going to like this story. This is the story of the evolution of
preemie care, so premature babies, and what would become neonatal intensive care
unit care, you know, NICU care. This is kind of, it's part of that story.
This is not everything. There's a lot that goes into obviously intensive care for newborn babies.
But this is one part of that story that I think is pretty interesting and like I said, a lot of
people have recommended it to thank you to Tamara and Sarah and Kelly and Michelle and Abby and
Shawna because this is a really neat story. I'm ready to say it embraced.
So for most of history, if a baby was born early, and by early, I mean, we're talking significantly
early.
I don't mean a couple days.
I mean, early enough that there would be some sort of concern for the safety of the
infant.
Basically, you just hope for the best.
At a lot of the times, whether a baby was born early
or was born with an illness or some sort of congenital disease,
it was all kind of lumped into the same category.
Basically, the baby was thought of as a weakling,
was the term that was often used,
just, oh, you gave birth to
a weakling. Kind of the same concept in animals as like the runt of the litter.
Right. Yeah. And and the thought was that, you know what, some babies are just born sickly,
they're just born puny. And I'm living evidence of that. Some, some people are born puny.
You were a huge baby. I was nine. You were not puny. You were I was nine pounds 11 ounces, but very little of that was
No, you were bigger than that. No, I know you're right. Charlie was nine pounds 11 hours. Our daughter babies are. I didn't have sick days. Not a lot of
babies have six packs. But the idea was that not only did they think that they couldn't do anything
for the baby, the idea was almost there isn't something to do. It's not that we don't know yet.
It's just their nature sort of. Yeah, right. Exactly. Prior to the late 1800s, any care for newborn was relegated to mom.
The doctor really would not have been involved.
So in a lot of these cases early on, we're talking about,
you know, women in the family are delivering the baby.
And then we go to, you know, midwifery and midwives
are delivering the babies.
Man, we really don't make enough time to say the word midwifery on this show.
That's a great word.
It's a great word.
Even as we start to enter a time period
where doctors are going into homes and delivering babies,
the doctor would not really be involved
with the baby afterwards.
They may, if there was some initial resuscitation needed,
the baby was having some trouble breathing
or something like that,
they might be involved in something initially,
but pretty much past that, it was mom's job.
So again, it wasn't even thought that this was a medical issue.
Okay.
And so a lot of parents would try kind of the,
just the stuff that they knew to do generally
for a baby.
Keep it warm, try to feed it, keep it clean.
But they really didn't have any concept of if the baby is born with any issues, what
do you pass that?
And the doctor was not very much help.
In the 1870s, this starts to change with...
Boy, that's a long time. May. Wow.
Atch. God. Yes, it is.
And let me say, in the 1870s, this is when we start to get like the beginnings of
what we really think of as intentional premature baby care. Not, obviously attempts were made.
Obviously, there were isolated, you know, people tried things.
I'm not saying that every baby that was born early prior to the 1870s
died, obviously not. But this was kind of the beginning of what we think of now as NICU care.
So, Stefan Tarnier, who was a French obstetrician, began to investigate other ways of specifically keeping babies warm,
because he had noticed that, you know, not a lot of babies were born in hospitals back then.
This was really before birth moved to hospitals. But the ones that were, he noticed that,
that if they were born early and they began to have problems, one of the things that they could measure as a problem, one of the objective findings is that they were too cold.
They were too cold.
They had trouble maintaining their body temperature.
And so he began to think-
That was in the whole four babies or that was a symptom of premature babies.
He noticed that a lot of premature babies had trouble keeping themselves warm and thought,
you know what, this is probably bad.
It's probably contributing to the fact that we're losing so many of these babies.
Maybe if we kept them warm, they would do better.
So get them down the copo, get a base tan on them, get a couple like version of my ties
in them, let them sew.
Sure.
Son, like shell crow style.
Right.
Send them on a cruise.
Yeah. No, that wasn't the idea. Instead. I'm so sure son like Charles Crowe style right send them on a cruise. Yeah
No, that wasn't the idea Instead
You really leaned into it for something that wasn't right at all said you really kind of let me let me along there
Sheesh, no instead instead he he began to think he was working at the Paris maternity hospital and he began to
Come up with a new way of keeping babies warm. He was actually inspired by the chicken incubators
that he saw at the Paris Zoo.
Oh, okay.
Like where they keep the eggs and stuff.
That makes sense, right?
So he saw those and he actually approached somebody
who built chicken incubators and said,
could you build this for human?
Can you take out the shape divots
and put a blanket over it or good?
I wanna put some babies in there.
So there was one that was built.
Boy, that must have been a long conversation.
You mean, no, babies?
No, not.
Well, partner, I don't think you can do that.
You need to do all this with a French accent.
Well, boss now.
I think you could be the baby in the little dig shape divots.
So in 1880 the first good.
I was like transported for the first time.
Yeah, I felt like I was in a Perry.
So the in 1880 the first one was introduced and it was like it was very much like a chicken
incubator. It was a large unit that could house several babies at once and you kind of put them inside.
And underneath was like a hot water reservoir that was hooked up to a power source so you
could just-
So we're brazing the babies.
We're sousvying the children.
So it would keep it very warm.
Is that would be a double boiler actually?
It's good for melting chocolate and warming babies.
It was later simplified, so this was the initial prototype.
He simplified it to single units because he thought it probably is probably better to keep
the babies in their own little.
And they're fighting over the thermostat.
Everybody has a different temperature they like.
So he kind of created these single units that instead of having these hot water reservoirs
underneath, he just used hot water bottles.
No.
So basically you would just fill up a hot water bottle,
tuck a couple of them under the baby,
and then every three hours you would have the nurses
come back and replace them with new ones.
Okay.
And that was how they keep babies warm.
And what they noticed is that just with this one little change
they began to see a decrease
in the mortality rate.
Excellent.
Now, a lot of other changes obviously had to occur, but this one thing was very exciting.
So this is something simple that we can do that can make a difference.
And as this was kind of publicized and word spread, the idea, the hope was that you would get more moms coming and giving birth in the
hospital just in case this would happen so that they would have access to these kinds
of facilities.
Because what they found is that the result instead was that a lot of people gave birth at
home and by that point.
And then would wait a few days, try to make things happen on their own, try to make
things okay on their own.
And then when things got really dire, would show up, they are looking for help.
And it would be too late.
And it would be too late.
And they would try everything anyway.
So it actually, the only reason I mentioned all of this is that part of why this had a
little trouble catching on is that as all of these people came in from outside in the
community, bringing infants who had been alive for some period of time and were not thriving, trouble catching on is that as all of these people came in from outside in the community
bringing infants who had been alive for some period of time and were not thriving, the
mortality rate went way back up because the data was skewed.
So then it was hard to prove to people, this is really working.
So it took a while for this idea to take hold because of this.
This did lead to a lot of
other realizations in newborn care. They figured out pretty quickly that mom being present,
or the person who gave birth to the baby being present was very important.
They figured out very quickly that if the pregnant person could take a break from their hard
labor jobs maybe that they had while they were pregnant or
immediately after they gave birth. They made it a little better. So it's crazy idea. So
maternity leave came out of this. Oh wow. A focus on breastfeeding, they recognize that breast
feeding was important. And not just for wet nurses, but if they could involve the person who actually gave birth.
They started using glass incubators at some point, so you could see the baby.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah, to improve bonding, that was a whole idea, was that the parent would bond better,
you could see the baby.
And so all of this.
That's also good, because it probably looked just a little too much like a grill before that if I'm envisioning it correctly.
And Tarnia did a lot of this and then one of his
one of the people who followed along in his footsteps, Dr. Pierre Boudin
was instrumental in continuing this and expanded on a lot of these ideas
and a lot of babies were saved because of all these cool new ideas in France. So they were really
the kind of the leaders. France was the, they, they led the way for this kind of figure.
And now after that, the incubators began to improve over the next few decades, particularly by
someone, Dr. Alexander Lyon. However, the new model that he made was superior. It was a much better
what we'd probably call an isolate now, but incubators with the columns, some column and incubators.
It was a much better model, the Lyon model, but it was very pricey. This is still a time where we're
trying to convince people to come give birth in the hospital,
and whether you agree with that or not, the more people who gave birth in the hospital,
the more worth it it was to the hospital to buy these things.
Okay, yeah.
So they were very pricey, he needed a way to pay for them.
So he came up with a novel idea.
He put the incubators in a storefront on a busy street. And he charged onlookers to come in and see the
workings of a nursery for premature babies. Okay, so kind of like blending some showmanship
with helping premature babies. Exactly. Exactly. Bottom vibe. Okay. So, so people were intrigued.
They looked at these in this storefront.
They would see these incubators
with these tiny little babies inside.
And they would say, well, what's going on in there?
It wasn't very expensive to come in and take a peek.
There wasn't a lot of entertainment back then.
Sure, right.
It was a little dull.
So, so people would come in and take a look
and this is how he helped fund this.
It was so successful that he actually kind of took the show on the road. So during the 1896 Berlin exposition, he held what
was called the Kinderbruten Stolt, which means the child hatchery show.
Okay. Yes. I'm loving this. Yes.
And displayed his incubators with babies. That must have been hard though on the road.
Like you pull up to the motel six
and you're like, is there some way I
into parking lots and I can leave my babies?
Yes.
I've got a truckload.
Lots of babies.
A lot of babies.
Although I need lots of doctors and nurses.
Do you have those?
This allowed people to come and see what he was doing
and see these technological advances,
but it also was to give the public more faith
in this type of medical care, like come to us,
bring us your children, we can help.
There are things we can do.
So it was to try to kind of build that confidence
in the medical system.
Um, because yeah, throughout history, doctors aren't always, you know, you know, you know,
we're not always trusted. I would always bow in history. Oh, like always little, little
feisty. I don't know. Yeah. Has it changed that much? You don't have to answer for their
crimes, isn't it? Anyway, one, one man who was particularly inspired by this, this particular idea, this idea
of showing the babies off as a way to raise money for this kind of care was Martin County.
Now he actually maybe assisted lion at one of these shows.
Maybe was, was involved with him and on some level.
And then he was inspired by that that the idea needs to happen.
Maybe they pulled him out of the crowd.
Like which one of you would like to come up and pet the babies?
Now what what were his qualifications to do this?
Because everybody I've mentioned so far has been a physician.
Right.
Are you asking me because I actually don't know? Well, I'm not sure either.
Okay. It is not clear that Dr. County,
as he called himself, was ever actually a doctor of anything.
Isn't doctor really just a state of mind Sydney?
Would you agree that doctor is a state of mind?
I wouldn't, not at all. No.
What about doctor feel good or doctor
tea. That's fine for them for for Dr. McRoy. It's not so he he immigrated to the US in 1888.
Exactly where he was born is also a little sketchy somewhere in what was then pressure.
sketchy somewhere in what was then Prussia. He claimed to be 19 when he moved to the US,
but the year, like I see 1869 and 1870 used interchangeably, so the year in place are a little sketchy.
He claimed to have studied at Leipzig and Berlin, and that he also did study in Paris after that under Budin who I had mentioned previously, worked with premature babies.
But the timeline doesn't add up for a lot of this.
He would have been so young to have complete all the things.
Sure, if he came over when he was 19,
like what kind of catch me if you can,
do you have a non-sensitivity bullet?
And there are also no records in Germany
of his having studied there, and especially like
the thesis he would have done, those are all kept, and we can't find anything attributed
to him or anything like his name from that time period. So there's no hard evidence that
he ever actually studied medicine.
Okay, that's not a great start, but keep going.
He initially actually in the, I think in the US census listed his occupation
as surgical instruments, like a dealer of them or a collector,
assuming not an or his or maybe he was posting about his fighting technique.
I am a surgical instrument.
My fists are surgical instruments.
He claimed for a time that he made incubators, but there's no patent for incubators listed in his name.
And a lot of it, he was initially selling work things he had, he had bought from, from other people.
He finally did claim the title physician in the 30s.
But again, I don't know that that was actually the case. Either way, he did take care of babies.
Okay, got that. Whether he was actually a doctor or not, he, he did take care of babies. Okay, got that.
Whether he was actually a doctor or not,
he took care of a lot of babies.
He was inspired, he hosted his own
preemie baby shows with these line incubators
in London and at the Pan American Exposition
in Buffalo, New York in 1901.
These shows were huge.
He really had that flare
that maybe the previous shows didn't
quite have.
The penache, the sound effects, the pyrotechnics, the whole 90.
Exactly. He got what this was all about. He got what the opportunity here was. So the
shows were huge. They had all these incubators, they had all these babies, they had nurses
and physicians all looking very dapper and caring for them actively during the show.
So you could see the doctors and nurses hard at work keeping these babies safe.
The audience were totally blown away by this. It was this huge, like you can see
pictures of the demonstrations and they were these huge sort of like
hospitals within a building kind of because they would be in like these big
fairs and things with a sign above that said, all the world loves a baby.
So it was kind of like a low five, I mean, there's some puppies in there and you're talking about a
low five version of YouTube, basically. It sort of was. Come in and look at the babies. He was
criticized at times for his methods. And he recognized what they were. He said he used to call it propaganda
for the proper care of preemies.
He knew what it was all about.
But some of his methods were a little unusual.
Like what?
I'm gonna tell you about him Justin,
but let's go to the building department.
I got me, let's go.
The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my cards
for the mouth.
Sydney, I believe unless I'm mistaken, you were going to tell me about some of the odd
methods of a doctor county.
Right. So before I do that, let me, let me offer you just a little bit of justification
in, in county's defense.
Okay.
So at this time in history, these incubators cost $75,000 each.
Hachi, Machi. At that time. $75,000 in that money. In that money. That would be $1.4 million
in our money. Oh crap. They were super expensive. Yeah. They were really expensive. They were
a box you put hot water bottles in. What the heck? Do you know how much you paid to come
see the babies? No, these are better. These are better incubators by this point. Oh, okay, good.
Yeah.
Let's say you paid a quarter to come see him.
So it's not like he was up charging.
Yeah, you're going to have to get pretty good foot traffic.
Cover that.
Thousands, thousands of people.
More.
I would say.
Well, I mean, he got good foot traffic.
Yeah.
Like, he got lots of people coming in.
You would have to get 300,000 people.
Right.
I mean, he traveled all over with the show.
Yeah.
He took no money from the families whose babies he was carrying
for did not charge them a penny to take care of their babies.
If they were in a hospital and there were actually stories
of this, babies who were in hospitals
where the doctors would come in and say, listen, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do.
You go home, your baby is a weakling,
they're not gonna make it, sorry.
He would send his ambulance with an incubator
to the hospital to pick up that baby
and take him to the show.
If the parents agreed, I mean, obviously,
if the parents agreed.
Thank you, yes, good.
This was never forced, this was always offered
because there were a lot of parents
you can imagine who were hesitant of science.
To put their babies in a side show.
Well, okay.
Yes.
More accurately.
Yes.
But he would send his ambulance and pick up these babies
and bring them to the show if the parents would agree.
For free, he accepted babies of all races
and socioeconomic status, which was a big deal
at this point in history.
Sure, yeah, obviously.
There was zero discrimination.
Everybody was eligible.
And the cost that he was eating
and then hopefully being able to fund
through the foot traffic was about $15 a day
at the time to care for the babies,
which would be about $405 in our money today.
Wow.
Per baby. So it didn't stop with the mind incubators?
No, no.
It was keeping the thing running.
And then all of the other, I'm not really going
into all of the other care that was developing
at this time of how to take care of a preemie.
But obviously from all the doctors and nurses
who were employed to work with these infants,
a lot of breakthroughs were being made constantly.
So a lot of care was going into this.
But all that being said, even though in these fares that he would take part in, there were
sections for like new technology.
If you went to one of these like a world's fares or something, there was a section where
it was serious stuff like.
Look at these technological breakthroughs that are going to revolutionize the world.
And that is ideally where he would have had his display.
That is not where it lived in these fairs right it lived in the area for what they would call sometimes like cultural exhibitions.
Sort of where you buy the sugarliders at the West Virginia Pumpkin Festival.
Yeah, the the the racist equivalent of that back then.
Okay, right.
So you would see like Native American shows with people who may or may not have been Native
Americans. You would have people who were supposedly from rare
tribes throughout the world that had been imported to the US to
do things that were racist and stereotypical, right, to be put
on display. Um, you had sometimes what would have been called
at the time freak shows. And that's where these babies were displayed.
It was in this section of the fair.
He would do things like have the nurses dress the babies
in clothes that were intentionally too large.
They actually got pretty good at dressing the babies in
doll clothes a lot of the time so that they would have clothes that fit because there weren't clothes that fit preemies back then right but
He would intentionally have them dressed in larger clothes and like tire ribbon around their middle to hold them on
So that it would accentuate how small
The babies were in order to draw more people in and to draw more pity which hopefully meant more mooney
and to draw more pity, which hopefully meant more mooney. Right.
He would, one of the babies that was displayed at one point in the Buffalo show was actually
born to, was actually the father was one of the Native Americans who was participating
in the Native American portion of the show.
And his name was Chief Minitails. Okay. I'm certain that wasn't
probably wasn't probably wasn't that his name, but okay. But the, but the, so when he introduced
this new infant in, in this infant's incubator, this was preceded by some sort of dance,
called a traditional dance,
and they had to chant the name of the manufacturer
of the incubator.
Oh, bro.
Yes, it's so bad.
Oh.
It's so bad.
And he's...
This time you're in history, man,
it's always like two-step forward eight-zaps back.
It's so rough.
It is.
It is because at the same time
that he's trying to revolutionize the care
of premature infants.
Yeah, oh God.
Right.
Yeah.
And all of these shows would eventually lead
to a permanent exhibit on Coney Island
that ran until the 1940s.
I mean, eventually those kids would just be too big.
It's like you're looking at a three year old
in a glass container.
It's like, what's the point?
Now, in general, even though this was popularizing
the idea of pre-me-care,
and the hope is what County always wanted
was that this would eventually move to hospitals
and not boardwalks.
There were several stumbling blocks
that it hit that prolonged this kind of period
of pre-me care.
Because like I said, this went on to the 1940s.
It started in like 1900.
So this is a long time to have a pre-me baby side show.
In the first place, like I said before, a lot of people are still having their babies at home.
You had to get people having babies in hospitals
to make it worth the hospitals while to do this kind of care. And until you had substantial
numbers of births taking place in a hospital, they just weren't going to offer this.
Yeah. So I'm not just fine. And I'm just saying that that was,
although it's hard. It was impossible for the hospitals. A lot of hospitals were totally funded by donations.
I mean, we have often decried the sort of hospitalization of the birth process, but like,
there's other factors you don't think about.
It's tough because for the people who are going to need, you know, who might have a premature
baby.
Exactly.
You need those resources.
For people who aren't, they're probably fine at home.
It's hard.
You can't predict.
But certainly if you were going into labor and it was early, you would know you need help,
but hospitals weren't providing it.
They just couldn't justify the expense.
In addition, up to this point, we have both obstetricians and pediatricians sort of involved
in running this kind of care, but neither one is really embracing it. So that was part
of what was hard was trying to find like, it had to be a specialty. It had to be a sub-specialty.
Nobody was taking that on yet. Obstetricians felt like this was their area because they
delivered the baby, so they should take it from there, but they were really much more concerned
with the mom or with the person who gave birth. PD Tritions weren't in the hospital to take care of the baby at that moment yet.
So there was no, it was unclear, who's in charge?
And without some sort of leader in the field who was going to make more innovations, who
was going to push it further, who was going to take it to the next step, you needed that
kind of passion and you needed somebody assigned that job and to make the new technology and
all that kind of stuff. So a lot of that stuff stagnated without a clear leader in it. The last big barrier,
unfortunately, at the time was the eugenics movement. So it's looking back, it's crazy to me that
this was part of the problem. But part of the problem is that there were still a lot of people who would make the case
that it's not even worth it to try.
Based on the concept that if you were born a quote unquote weakling, you were genetically inferior.
And we were harming the human race by taking it by making any efforts to save your life.
Listen, I don't want to, I don't want to reflany feathers, but I don't even think that's right.
I don't even agree with that really.
I think there are a lot of a lot of people who were premature babies who would probably agree with you.
Yeah.
Throughout all this though, County held his baby shows. They even had they had a fire
in 1911 at the Coney Island exhibit. Oh, no. All babies were saved. All right. Yes. Every baby was
actually the the people who were part of the the freak show that I'm that is what it was called.
I'm using the the words of the time. We're actually like instrumental in saving a lot of these infants.
Where is that movie?
Come on.
There was an epidemic of a GI bug at the Louisiana Purchase Show.
Everybody made it through and he persevered.
This did not stop his momentum.
And he began to bill himself as the last hope for
premium care in the country and he may have been kind of right, frankly.
He held a show in Chicago in 1914.
And this is a big turning point for him where the local medical society said,
listen, we'll let you do your show.
That's fine.
People love this stuff.
But we want one of our local doctors to oversee it because you're a little
sketchy.
Your methods are questionable.
So.
We heard the chanting.
We heard the chanting.
We don't like some of this.
And as fortune would have it,
a Dr. Julius Hess was given the task.
Hess was already someone involved with pre-me care
through the Children's Aid Society.
And his predecessor had actually left a huge endowment at his feet to kind
of you be the next like pass along like you take over premature baby care here in Chicago.
Here's tons of money figure out how to do it.
And so Hess was already passionate about this, but he didn't quite know where next to go.
How how to implement this how to make this happen.
He was actually pretty inspired by county's show and by his incubators and by the care that they were providing in some of his methods. So he invested in and created a new and improved
version, the Hess incubator. He came up with new systems and protocols, developed what essentially would
become the modern day in ICU, neonatal intensive care unit. He trained nurses specifically for this
task. So he kind of created the specialty of NICU nursing and revolutionized the way that we
look at newborn care. And a lot of that, like in his first book, he wrote about it.
He thanked specifically Martin County, Dr. Martin County, he called him for his
leader, for his guidance, for his leadership, for, for inspiring him to do this.
In addition, he started doing long term studies on these babies to show that, you know, 5,
10, 20 years down the road.
These people are fine by and large.
So this whole idea of a weakling, of some sort of inherent, you know, illness or sickness
or whatever is wrong.
And this was huge.
This kind of getting rid of this concept and just saying,
nah, they're just born a little early.
They need a little help.
Was huge because it eliminated this very,
again, like racist idea of the weakling.
He became known as the father of American new natology
and he was inspired by Martin County.
By the time he and County presented another show
at the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition,
County finally was kind of respected.
Like he was interviewed as a kind of like a conquering hero.
Like look at what this amazing,
because of his association with Hess
and everything that Hess had done.
He even had a reunion shortly after that for graduates of his show to come back.
Oh, great.
You can read some of these people are still alive and you can read some really amazing stories
of them saying things like, one woman said she went up to him and said, like, I was one
of your babies. Here I am. And he was talking to her. And then he grabbed
one of the fathers who had a baby in the show at the moment and pulled him over and said,
this will be your child someday. This will be yours. Look, she was one of my babies.
And here she is doing fine. This will be your child someday. So just have faith. And
then people got to come back and meet the man who basically saved their lives.
There are, it's hard to get hard numbers as to how many babies county may have saved. He claims
that he treated around 8,000 and that his success rate was like 85%, which is amazing. I don't know
if those numbers are completely accurate, but it was probably around that.
And like I said, there are still people today who say,
my existence and my five children and my 10 grandchildren
and so on and so forth are because of this man.
We would not be here if it weren't for him.
Because in every story, the hospitals gave up.
The hospital said, sorry, bad luck.
You lost the genetic draw, you know, that was it.
County also actually had a preemie.
Wow, really?
In 1907, well his wife did.
And her name was Hilda Gard and she did okay
and came back and would help him with the shows,
which is kind of a cool story.
And after he died, his obituary was in the New York Times,
because he was such an influential, important figure of the day.
This obviously inspired a lot more doctors to adopt
the incubators, and there were a lot of things that he did
that were not, you know, I won't get into the way
he revolutionized premium care that inspired many doctors and things, of course,
are very different today, but this is how we pave the way
for taking care of premature babies in this country
with this maybe a doctor, maybe not,
definitely a shaman, immigrant who came to this country
and saved the lives of like
6,500 of our children.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Immigrants crushing it every single time.
That's right.
That's right.
This could go in our series.
Now all that being said, if this, if you think this story is really cool, I'm not the first
one to tell it by the way, I think there's also a documentary on it.
Oh yeah. And there are like NPR stories on it. Like this is, this story has been told. I'm not
the first one to find it. That's an amazing story. But there's also supposed to be a movie that's
going to come out about it. This was just announced earlier this year, but I think it's going to be
called Dreamland. Excellent. It'll be based on his life and what he did.
So it's a wonderful story, Sid.
And thank you for sharing it with me.
I appreciate it.
No problem, Justin.
I had very little part in this story.
I really just read a lot about it and cried a lot as I read it.
Yeah.
You were sitting next to me researching this.
When you got to the Eugenics part,
you were very put out like, oh, come on.
This is going so well.
Every time I think humanity is doing this amazing thing, you run into this like scumbags.
So that is going to do it for us folks.
Thank you so much for listening to our program.
Thanks to this week's sponsors.
Thanks to you.
Hey, if you want to see a live solvones, you still can. If you go to podcom. Thanks to this week's sponsors. Thanks to you. Hey, if you want to see a live
solvones, you still can. If you go to podcom.com, we're going to be performing there along with
still buffering my brother, my brother and me 99% visible. I think is going to be there.
I know Roman Mars is going to be there. I don't know if he's performing or not probably
is. And there's a lot of other great shows that you can check totally out night veil.
It's going to be there. It's going to be heck of fun. And it's going to be in Seattle, December 9th and 10th. I believe I said that enough times
at this point you think I should know. But if you go to podcon.com you can get tickets.
And even if you can't make it, there's like a remote ticket you can do. So you can check out
a lot of the stuff there. So go do that. I
think you will enjoy it and thanks. The taxpayers. Not yet. For the use of their
song medicines is the intro and not your program and thanks to you again for
listening. We started we weren't with you last week. Thanksgiving and what
have you. Our friends Tim and Guy from the worst of the
able time. Are you blaming it on Tim and Guy? I'm blaming it on Tim and Guy. That's really unfair.
So there.
But let's get to it for us, folks.
So until next week, my name is Justin McRoy.
I'm Sydney McRoy.
And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. All right.
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