Babies were featured in carnival sideshows in the early 20th century, as part of a campaign by German pediatrician Martin Couney to introduce incubators to the public. He had started at the World Exposition in Berlin in 1896, displaying premature babies borrowed from a local charity hospital, then moved to London the following year. The Lancet expressed some misgivings about associating babies with carnival showmen, but it supported Couney’s exhibit and the principle of incubation.

Couney moved to the United States in 1903 and displayed babies at Coney Island every summer for 40 years. Because he charged the parents nothing, the exhibition brought the expensive procedure within reach of needy families, saving hundreds of lives as it educated the public. “Dr. Couney’s Baby Farm” remained open until 1943, shortly after Cornell University opened the city’s first neonatal unit, and a number of adults who had been treated there met regularly in New York.