Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Baby Show

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

This 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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Starting point is 00:00:00 Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. 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
Starting point is 00:01:10 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
Starting point is 00:01:30 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
Starting point is 00:01:52 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
Starting point is 00:02:36 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.
Starting point is 00:03:05 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,
Starting point is 00:03:37 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,
Starting point is 00:04:34 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,
Starting point is 00:04:54 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.
Starting point is 00:05:18 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.
Starting point is 00:05:41 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.
Starting point is 00:06:17 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.
Starting point is 00:06:59 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.
Starting point is 00:07:22 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.
Starting point is 00:07:50 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?
Starting point is 00:08:08 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.
Starting point is 00:08:20 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-
Starting point is 00:08:53 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.
Starting point is 00:09:14 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
Starting point is 00:09:34 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.
Starting point is 00:09:51 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.
Starting point is 00:10:27 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
Starting point is 00:10:49 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
Starting point is 00:11:26 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.
Starting point is 00:12:00 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
Starting point is 00:12:50 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.
Starting point is 00:13:19 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.
Starting point is 00:13:54 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.
Starting point is 00:14:21 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.
Starting point is 00:14:39 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.
Starting point is 00:15:00 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.
Starting point is 00:15:44 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.
Starting point is 00:16:09 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.
Starting point is 00:16:48 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?
Starting point is 00:17:21 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,
Starting point is 00:17:52 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.
Starting point is 00:18:26 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
Starting point is 00:18:44 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
Starting point is 00:19:13 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.
Starting point is 00:19:50 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
Starting point is 00:20:10 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
Starting point is 00:20:41 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.
Starting point is 00:20:57 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.
Starting point is 00:21:07 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
Starting point is 00:21:34 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.
Starting point is 00:21:48 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
Starting point is 00:22:01 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
Starting point is 00:22:17 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
Starting point is 00:22:34 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
Starting point is 00:23:03 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
Starting point is 00:23:44 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.
Starting point is 00:24:19 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
Starting point is 00:24:57 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.
Starting point is 00:25:30 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.
Starting point is 00:25:43 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
Starting point is 00:25:56 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
Starting point is 00:26:14 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.
Starting point is 00:26:35 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.
Starting point is 00:27:20 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,
Starting point is 00:27:41 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.
Starting point is 00:28:26 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.
Starting point is 00:29:11 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
Starting point is 00:29:53 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
Starting point is 00:30:23 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.
Starting point is 00:30:43 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
Starting point is 00:30:59 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
Starting point is 00:31:46 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.
Starting point is 00:32:32 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.
Starting point is 00:32:59 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
Starting point is 00:33:22 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.
Starting point is 00:33:56 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.
Starting point is 00:34:38 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
Starting point is 00:35:00 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,
Starting point is 00:35:26 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.
Starting point is 00:35:52 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
Starting point is 00:36:14 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.
Starting point is 00:36:39 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.
Starting point is 00:37:00 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
Starting point is 00:37:34 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.
Starting point is 00:38:05 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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artists owned.
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