Miracle at Coney Island
How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine
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Narrated by:
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Coleen Marlo
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By:
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Claire Prentice
About this listen
How did thousands of premature infants come to be exhibited at America's most popular amusement park?
In Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine, Claire Prentice uncovers the incredible true story of Martin Couney, the "incubator doctor."
Couney ran his incubator facility for premature babies at Coney Island from 1903 to 1943 and set up similar exhibits at World's Fairs and amusement parks across America, and in London, Paris, Mexico and Brazil.
Couney's techniques were advanced for the time and his facility was expensive to run. But he didn't charge the parents of the preemies a penny; instead the public paid to see them. He claimed to have a survival rate of 85 percent. By contrast, most mainstream doctors in the early part of the 20th century regarded premature babies as "weaklings" and did little or nothing to save them.
Prentice's meticulous research unravels the mystery of Couney's origins, and reveals that the "incubator doctor" was not all that he seemed. She brings one of the most extraordinary stories in American medicine to life through interviews with Couney's former "incubator babies."
©2016 Claire Prentice (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Salk became a cultural hero and icon for a whole generation. Now, at the fiftieth anniversary of the first national vaccination program, and as humanity is tantalizingly close to eradicating polio worldwide, comes this unforgettable chronicle. Salk's work was an unparalleled achievement, and it makes for a magnificent listen.
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Excellent book
- By Tim on 08-10-06
By: Jeffrey Kluger
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The Knife Man
- The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery
- By: Wendy Moore
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's murky and macabre world - a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.
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Brilliant
- By Bird on 12-02-15
By: Wendy Moore
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Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
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Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
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The Birth of the Pill
- How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Gayle Hendrix
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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We know it simply as "the pill", yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic.
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Overall Excellent Read
- By Rachel on 04-02-22
By: Jonathan Eig
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The Curse of Beauty
- The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America's First Supermodel
- By: James Bone
- Narrated by: Marianne Fraulo
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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As America was stepping into the modern era, one great beauty became the artist's model of choice. Her perfect form became the emblem of the Gilded Age and appears on the greatest monuments of New York and the nation. Supermodel, actress, icon - her beauty paved the way for a life of glamour, passion, and ultimately tragedy. Her name is Audrey Munson.
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Fascinating
- By Аmazon Customer on 04-06-17
By: James Bone
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Teeth
- The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America
- By: Mary Otto
- Narrated by: Suehyla El'Attar
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.
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Content everyone should know; dismal narration
- By Elaine on 08-04-17
By: Mary Otto
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Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
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Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
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Captive of the Labyrinth
- Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune
- By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The first full-length biography of Sarah Winchester, the subject of the movie Winchester starring Helen Mirren, now available for the first time in audio. Since her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester has been perceived as a mysterious, haunted figure. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death of her husband in 1881, Sarah purchased a simple farmhouse in San José, California. She began building additions to the house and continued construction on it for the next twenty years. A hostile press cast Sarah as the conscience of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—a widow shouldering responsibility for the many deaths caused by the rifle that brought her riches. She was accused of being a ghost-obsessed spiritualist, and to this day it is largely believed that the extensive construction she executed on her San José house was done to appease the ghouls around her. But was she really as guilt-ridden and superstitious as history remembers her? When Winchester’s home was purchased after her death, it was transformed into a tourist attraction. The bizarre, sprawling mansion and the enigmatic nature of Winchester’s life were exaggerated by the new owners to generate publicity for their business. But as the mansion has become more widely known, the person of Winchester has receded from reality, and she is only remembered for squandering her riches to ward off disturbed spirits.
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Facts to Silence the Myths
- By Carmen Gibson on 03-07-24
By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
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The Lives They Left Behind
- Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
- By: Peter Stastny, Darby Penney
- Narrated by: Alex Paul
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.
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Not really the book I expected
- By B. Shaff on 11-09-17
By: Peter Stastny, and others
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One Child
- The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
- By: Mei Fong
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birthrates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society.
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Best Book Club Discussion Ever!!
- By Rachael W. Schettenhelm on 05-01-17
By: Mei Fong
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Hershey
- Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
- By: Michael D'Antonio
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In this compelling biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio gives us the real-life rags-to-riches story of Milton S. Hershey, a largely uneducated businessman whose idealistic sense of purpose created an immense financial empire, a town, and a legacy that lasts to this day.
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The Benchmark for Chartiable, Rich Men
- By Boyd Tschaggeny on 01-30-19
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Mark Twain: Man in White
- The Grand Adventure of His Final Years
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Shelden illuminates Mark Twain’s twilight years in this brilliant account of the legendary author’s life. Drawing heavily on Twain’s own letters and journals, Mark Twain: Man in White recounts both Twain’s private family experiences and his larger-than-life public image.
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Fantastic book
- By Tad Davis on 08-23-10
By: Michael Shelden
What listeners say about Miracle at Coney Island
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Fran w.
- 01-25-18
Great history
Brought new light to medical history in views of how companionate one must Be or to go to great lengths for there time to show the need for something that can save lives. I liked this book because it makes u want to be there.. the only thing to me that was missing was could anyone look to the doctors passed before he came to this country ?
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 02-18-18
What is Ethical
What I found intriguing in this book are the ideas of ethical behavior, social responsibility, and how questions of life are challenged.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Holley
- 06-26-22
Amazing story!!
I loved this all the information was fantastic to know! Hard to believe that this man saved so many babies! I was a preemie myself in 1954! If not for his work and a lot of prayers I wouldn't have lived!
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- Antonina
- 07-02-24
The story itself. What an amazing man.
Can't say anything negative. Good journalism. As author mentioned,It would be so so interesting,so speak to Martin Kohen, but even with out personal interview,I have enjoyed this story.
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