Historical Perspectives

Historians trace the beginnings of incubator care to Johann Georg von Ruehl in 1835 at the Imperial Foundling Hospital in St Petersburg, Russia. However, the French obstetrician Stéphane Tarnier (1828–1897) is credited with having conceived the development of “incubators” for preterm infants similar to those used for “brooding hens” (couveuses). Collaborating with an engineer from Paris, he developed an ingenious “thermo-siphon” heating system that circulated hot water between a double-walled metallic cage that could hold two preterm infants comfortably. In 1880, the Tarnier incubators were installed at the Paris Maternity Hospital, which became the world’s first neonatal intensive care unit (ICU).

In 1915, Dr Julius Hess (1876–1955) introduced an electric-heated water-jacketed infant incubator and bed at the Sarah Morris …