Martin Couney's Story Revisited Writing history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.

To the Editor. Seventeen years ago, one of us (W.A.S.)1 reported the odd story of Martin Couney, the “incubator doctor,” who exhibited premature infants in side shows for 50 years beginning in 1896 at the “Berliner Gewerbe Ausstellung,” a trade fair. Couney claimed that Pierre Budin of Paris, the famous pioneer in premature infant care, sent him (Couney) to the Berlin exposition to exhibit a newly modified convection-ventilated incubator. A caveat was noted in the 1979 article in Pediatrics: “… The search has taken 28 years (so far), and some loose ends remain.” Sure enough, a short time after publication, Couney's account began to unravel. Felix Marx, a reader in Bonn, Germany, saw the article and wrote to call attention to a relevant piece in …