Immature Infants in France

The Lancet, January 16, 1897, p. 196

THAT the threatening depopulation of France is a most serious misfortune against which our neighbours are striving in a variety of ways and with greater or less success, cannot, unfortunately, be gainsaid, but even in this lamentable case the old proverb, “‘Tis an ill wind that blowe nobody good, may be applied with perfect accuracy. A persistently diminishing birth-rate might well be looked upon as an evil out of which no benefit could possibly arise, and yet with respect to one fragile, but by no means unimportant, section of the French coumunity the national unfruitfulness has proved itself to be a veritable blessing in disguise, The heretofore forlorn beings who have thus fortuitously derived benefit from the general calamity are the newly born infants, who from various causes, but chiefly by reason of their premature appearance on the scene, are peculiarly unfitted to withstand

“the thousand netural shocks / That flesh is heir to”

Formerly no very serious efforts were made to prolong the ephemeral existence of these unwelcome little strangers. They were rather hopelessly allowed to pine away and die, under the impression that they could not possibly survive, but human life has of late become so valuable in France that no breatbing wait need now be abandoned as an irretrievable derelict. Little children bave ever been esteemed the most precious of human possessiong all the world over, but it was reserved for an energetic Frenchman to set the seal upon this preciousness by conserving the immature specimens in glass cases. That this is simply a statement of fact many of our readere are doubtless already aware, but should there be any questioners among them they have merely to pay a visit to No. 26, Boulevard Poissonière, Paris, in order to obtain resolution of their doubts by ocular demonstration. At that addrese, under the designation “Ouvre Maternelle des Couveuses d’Enfants,” they will find a truly remarkable institution, which owes its inception and development to the zeal and philanthropy of Dr. Alexandre Lion of Nice. Ruminating one day on the perilous condition of his country from a demographic point of view, it struck tbis patriotic and humane member of the medical profession that the holocaust among prematurely born infants would be largely diminished it the helpless atoms could only be kept sufticiently warm. Accordingly, in 1891 be invented his couveuse, or modified incubator, which may briefly be described as a woven wire mattress suspended in a glass case, the latter being heated by a water coil and kept sweet and wholesome by a constant infow of purified filtered air. The success attending on this new departure in infant life preservation has been surprising. A prematurely born child, it exempt from hereditary disease, never dies in Dr. Lion’s institute provided it weighs not less than two and a quarter pounds – that is, about one-third of the normal standard-and provided, also, that its installation in the souvense is accomplished with the least possible delay and exposure. At this stage of the untimely bud’s frail existence a chill is almost certainly fatal, ao the transfer from the lying-in bed cannot take place too soon or be carried out too carefully. The theory that immature infants require exceptional warmth is, of course, not a new one. Every midwife knows the importance in such cases of immediate swaddling; and children born before their time, whose survival was regarded as well-nigh hopeless, have ere now been saved by such devices as enwrapment in newly-flayed skins, the utilisation as cradles of freshly eviscerated sheep and goats, &c. The inventor of the couveuse, nevertheless, amply deserves the lion’s share of the credit, not merely on account of his ingenious amplification of a well-known principle, but also for his untiring advocacy and capable organisation.

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