The machine in the nursery

by Jeffrey P. Baker

In the late nineteenth century French obstetricians reported that a new medical device, the infant incubator, made possible the rearing of premature infants whose prospects until then had been nearly hopeless. The announcement set off a wave of enthusiasm that swept the United States. Hospitals opened the first premature infant nurseries, and incubator shows (complete with live infants) opened in numerous public fairs and expositions. Yet Americans did more than adopt the incubator; they reinvented it in the process. A simple domestic warming device became a complex life-support system intended to provide a complete artificial environment for the premature infant. In The Machine in the Nursery Jeffrey Baker examines the transformation that overtook the incubator after it arrived from France in the United States. He argues that the apparatus furnishes an example of how social and cultural factors can fundamentally alter the evolution of medical technology. The analysis centers on the in