More on Propaganda for Preemies

I am very jealous of Dawn Raffel for having written The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How A Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies. It’s a book and topic that has been in my head, hard drive and in a file of papers now on a bookshelf for about seventeen years.
After my son was born premature, I looked at a lot of books about premature babies and read about an Infantorium where the babies were hospitalized on Coney Island. Wait, what? Was my reaction and I immediately began searching online for any and all information on Dr. Couney. There was not much in 2002. I found Dr. William Silverman’s work from the 70’s and 80’s, a few scattered articles and little else.

I tried to find out more on the Doctor, his patients and ran into many dead ends. I did have a single email from one of his former patients which was great but did not lead to anything further. I spoke on the phone to one of the organizers of the Coney Island History Museum. He told me there was at least one person working on a book and when I asked if he had any idea where Dr. Couney’s papers were he said, “No, do you?”

While reading Ms. Raffel’s excellently researched book I saw that she had the same discoveries and dead ends that I did. Like her, I wanted to contact Dr. Silverman, but was unable to as he had died. But she had the ability to dig further, deeper and the talent to write it down beautifully. She was also unable to find his papers, and found out a lot more about his daughter than I was able to, with added speculation about her history. I always thought she was the key to a lot of his story, but most of that died with her.

Where I was able to find one of his former patients, Ms. Raffel was able to find several, and it led to a joyful reunion of some of them.

There is a great mystery to Dr. Martin Couney’s life, which is what compelled me to look into it for more than several hours a year over the past seventeen. It’s ability that I lacked in writing it down and Dawn Raffel has written a wonderful book that leaves a lot of questions open, but also provides many answers and unlocks more than a few doors about the profound life of a very enigmatic man.

As Mary Wells sang, You Beat Me to the Punch

When you do half assed work on a project for years, you cannot be upset when someone else beats you to the publishing press. Such is the case with Claire Prentice, who has recently wrote a book called Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine.

It's about Martin Couney, the man who saved many, many lives of premature babies by keeping them in infantoriums, an early form of a modern neo-natal unit disguised as a carnival sideshow.

Her research is sound, and it makes some fantastic discoveries about Couney, primarily about his early background (which is still very murky) but also reveals that he never earned any kind of medical degree. A rather amazing accomplishment considering the work he was doing. Prentice does say, correctly, that Couney never administered medication, his techniques and innovations in neo-natal science did not really use it. Plus, although there is no paper trail, he claims to have had a very high success rate at saving lives.

After my son was born premature, I came across Couney through the work of William Silverman a noted neonatalogist, who was one of the first American doctors to do any research into Couney's life. He died in 2004, but Prentice was able to interview one of Silverman's colleagues, but did not give Silverman any credit.

Prentice did find and interview several of Couney's patients (I found one) and gives us a good look at how the infantorium was run. She also mentioned the patients proudly displayed photographs of themselves at the infantorium but the book has no photographs. A missed opportunity to humanize them, and Couney.

Overall it is a slim volume, only available on Kindle, that cracks a few mysteries about the life of Martin Couney save one. I'm still trying to find out what happened to Couney's Daughter Hildegarde, who became one of his nurses. No trace of her seems to exist. I think the paperwork of the Couney estate and infantoriums went with her.

Three things I am trying to find.

Most of the time, I have mad research skills. I can find things, it is part of what I do for a living, and I'm good at it. Most of the time. There are times where I am fallible. When google fu evades me. These are the things I've been trying to research. Three things that frustrate me to no end every few months when I go back to them. These are my Holy Grails.

1) The family of Dr. Martin Couney. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowitz  got me back on this case after she gave a talk about her book last week. Couney was the doctor of the Coney Island Infantorium for many years in the early 20th century. His work was sound, and it was said he saved many premature babies. Just how many, and who they were is not exactly known. His papers have not been found, and his only family, his daughter Hildegarde, is untraceable. I'm sure she's dead, but where and when did she die. She is said to have never married and I cannot find her. I'm also a few hundred miles from some where I can find potential leads. Drives me nuts!

2) Information about my Great Uncle Edward A. Plunkett, who served in the 45th division Company A in World War 2 and was killed in action in March 1945. I received his individual death file a couple of years ago. What I'm trying to find are people alive who knew him during the war. Those chances are dying by the day, if they're not already gone. I'm in a Facebook group about the 45th, which is informative but I have hit nothing directly. There's also a strong possibility he had a child, and it's been one dead end after another.

3) Elton John, August 5th, 1982. This was a show I saw at Madison Square Garden and it was a really good concert. Been trying to find a bootleg of it, but have never found one from that specific date. I'm pretty sure it was taped because someone was playing part of the show on the train ride home after the concert. I'd also like to know if the setlist is as I remember. The link says he did The Bitch is Back after Empty Garden, I'm pretty sure it was Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I wonder if the death crush I went with would remember?

I rotate these items, occasionally I find a small nugget, a name, an extra link to bookmark. Concrete conclusions and evidence has been hard to come by though. So I plod on, knowing that life would not be complete when I find the information, but a path for more mysteries.