Historical Perspective - Neonatology.pdfVIP

Historical Perspective The Incubator and the Medical Discovery of the Premature Infant Jeffrey P. Baker, MD, PhD doing so, I will be building on the foundations built by earlier clini- cian-historians. Much of this work, thanks particularly to the efforts of L. Joseph Butterfield and William A. Silverman, has centered on one The invention of the incubator in 1880 ignited a dramatic outpouring of of the most fascinating phenomena of the premature nursery area, popular and professional excitement over the prospect of reducing pre- the popularity of incubator baby side-shows in fairs and amusement mature infant mortality. Yet the technology itself progressed slowly and parks before the Second World War.1,2 Other writers have dealt with fitfully over the next 50 years. The story is worth examining not so much various other aspects of neonatal technology, public health, and par- from the standpoint of technological progress, but from the perspective of ticular controversies, such as the retrolental fibroplasia epidemic.3–5 how responsibility for the newborn shifted from mothers to obstetricians The main thrust of my own work has been to integrate these various and eventually pediatricians. It also illustrates how the history of tech- stories into a social context, with as much attention given to who nology involves more than invention. The invention of the incubator controls a technology as to who invented it.6 In doing so, I hope to itself was less significant than the de