How an impostor doctor from Brooklyn saved the lives of 6500 children

Martin Coney came to New York from Europe and brought incubators for premature babies with him. He only pretended to be a doctor, but this did not stop him from saving 6500 babies from certain death. One of the most famous great humanists died practically beggar. The story of his amazing life was shared by an online magazine Bigpicture.

Strange show

In 1903, strange posters appeared on the streets of Brooklyn. In them, New Yorkers were invited to inexpensively look at premature babies. Such a strange attraction was owned by a German Jew, doctor Martin Coney. He himself called himself a doctor, although he did not have a medical education.

Inside the attraction there were incubators with babies born prematurely.

The first incubators for premature babies appeared in Paris in 1880. Coney acquired several of these devices in France and brought them in 1896 to an exhibition of technical achievements in Berlin. However, the Germans, like the residents of other European countries, did not arouse interest. So Coney went to America and settled in Brooklyn.

In New York, his show ran from 1903 to 1940. For 25 cents, visitors could see with their own eyes premature babies and devices that were complex for that time to support their lives.

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Posters and articles in newspapers then were full of shocking headlines like: “Here you will see strange little creatures (up to 25 at a time). It's hard to believe that all of them will ever become full-fledged people. They look more like monkeys than men or women. " This is how the popular weekly World Fair told about the children's exhibition, although this is not the most unusual description.

Personal mission

It seems that Martin Coney's life mission was to save children, hopeless from the point of view of mainstream medicine. He continued to do so, despite the reproaches and ridicule of his medical colleagues. Some considered him insane, others accused him of inhumanity, mockery of the dying and greed.

He was shouted in the face of accusations of violating medical ethics, although he did not even have a medical education. But even that did not stop him from saving more lives than many venerable medical professors.

What was the Coney ride

The incubators Coney brought from Paris were a real miracle of technology. These boxes, made of glass and steel, were supplied with heat from a steam boiler. Inside, devices were installed to control humidity and temperature, and the baby himself was reliably protected from a world hostile to him by transparent doors.

Maintaining the life of one child cost $ 15 a day, in terms of modern money it is about $ 400. In this way, the people who came to watch the struggle for the lives of the tiny patients financed their lives.

All of Coney's employees have been carefully selected. The applicants had to be distinguished by a high level of responsibility and be neat. The nurses were required to keep the room perfectly clean, which was very difficult to do with an impressive flow of visitors.

Coney fired employees who were caught smoking or drinking alcohol without speaking.

Nurses looked for clothes for premature babies in toy stores, or sewed them with their own hands.

Critics, meanwhile, continued to ridicule the impostor doctor while he was doing good.

Over the years of its operation, 6500 children have been saved.

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One of the women who gave birth to a child ahead of schedule recalled that the doctors simply refused to help. They said that her child should never have been born, and now he should be allowed to just die. Fortunately, the woman's husband knew about Coney's ride. His unconventional decision for that time, which was joked about in medical circles, was the only chance to save a premature baby.

Medical breakthrough and end of career

In the early 1940s, the attraction was closed, because there were positive changes in medicine and children who were born prematurely began to be rescued. Incubators similar to those brought to America by the impostor doctor began to appear in maternity hospitals and hospitals in the United States and Europe.

Martin Coney has lived a wonderful long life of caring for little people. He died in the 1950s at the age of 80.

One of the greatest humanists of the XNUMXth century did not gain absolutely anything over the years of work and left this world absolutely beggar. But what he was able to do for humanity can hardly be overestimated: thanks to Coney, premature babies were no longer considered biomaterial and were recognized as people who have the right to life and need professional help.