Historical Perspectives

Editor’s Note

The following article appears a little more than 50 years after it was written! The reason is that the text was in the hands of my former colleague Jerold F. Lucey, longtime editor of Pediatrics, who discovered it recently when he was cleaning out his office at the University of Vermont. According to Jerry, the talk was delivered before a select audience of pediatricians interested in the newborn, assembled at the invitation of Dewey Sehring, the longtime director of the Ross Conferences on Pediatric Research. This occurred in conjunction with the joint meeting of the American Pediatric Society (APS) and the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), held in Philadelphia in 1961. To our knowledge, this has never appeared previously in a print journal. Certainly, it does not appear in the listings of Index Medicus. It is included in a repository of Dr Charles Chapple’s papers given to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which may also include some photographs of his incubator. The contents of the talk are reproduced Courtesy of the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. (see http://invention.smithsonian.org/resources/MIND_Repository_Details.aspx?rep_id=1807 and also: http://collphyphil.org/FIND_AID/hist/histccc1.htm).

We previously published “An Encapsulated History of Thermoregulation in the Neonate” by Sheldon Korones in 2004 (1) and, more recently, perinatal profiles on two of the physicians most involved with promoting incubator care in the United States—Martin Couney (2) and Julius Hess (3)—as well as one on Pierre Budin, among the most influential physicians in improving neonatal care in France and around the world. (4) The history of the incubator-baby sideshows that were organized by Martin Couney has been documented in an article by William Silverman published in Pediatrics some time ago, (5) and, more recently, Jeffrey Baker wrote a book that covered much of the history of incubators. (6) …