![]() ![]() One, founded by Joseph DeLee, M.D., the famed obstetrician, opened in Chicago as the Lying-In Hospital. During the early decades of the 1900s, a few American hospitals established short-lived premature infant stations. ![]() They include maintaining warmth, providing adequate nutrition, and preventing infection. Translated into English in 1907 and available in the United States, The Nursling: The Feeding and Hygiene of Premature and Full-Term Infants became the standard for physicians, nurses, and others interested in premature babies. Its basic tenets, which relied on traditional common sense, still form the basis of care today. Pierre Budin published the first major textbook on the care of preemies. Early Twentieth Century: Premature Care in Hospitals Some hospitals provided care for preemies using other means of providing warmth, including open incubators and more traditional methods such as warm bricks in cradles and rooms heated to ninety degrees or more. Many physicians, relying on anecdotal rather than statistical evidence, dismissed the incubator as ineffective and even dangerous. Over- or underheated incubators caused potentially fatal errors. Their faulty design also posed serious problems. While entertaining, the incubator exhibit’s identification as a side show and location among midway entertainment spectacles initially prevented mainstream physicians from embracing incubators as substantive progress. Martin Couney brought the shows to the United States in the late 1890s, and they continued until the 1940s. The small size of the infants, their placement in a machine similar to those used on farms for poultry incubation, and the encouragement of carnival style barkers stimulated the interest of the fair-going public. (Politicians feared the lack of sufficient soldiers for future wars). In Europe, displays of premature infants in their incubators began appearing in the late nineteenth century at national fairs and exhibitions. Nurses caring for newborns, Philadelphia General Hospital, 1895.French physicians introduced the closed infant incubator in the 1880s in response to governmental mandates to decrease the overall dismal French infant mortality rate. Survival of these tiny infants depended on many factors, chief of which were the degree of prematurity and the infant’s weight at birth. “Preemies” who survived more than a day or two were often labeled “weaklings” or “congenitally debilitated” implying an inherent frailty that did not bode for their future. Except for a few scattered pockets of medical interest, the knowledge, expertise, and technology necessary to help these infants was not available. Late Nineteenth Century: Premature Infants and Incubator ShowsĪt the turn of the twentieth century, a baby born prematurely (before thirty-eight to forty weeks gestation) had dismal prospects for survival. This is, however, a relatively recent development in the care of infants. While debate continues about the limits of viability of prematurely born infants, those born after at least twenty-four weeks of gestation have increasingly optimistic prognoses. There specially trained physicians, nurses, and an army of other health care personnel anticipate and meet their every need. Premature infants are commonly found ensconced within the walls of hospital-based Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU’s) in both large and small hospitals. ![]()
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