I was disturbed to read that Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, had “a display of incubators containing live babies.” They were an attraction run by Dr. Martin A. Couney who held his first incubator exhibit at the World Exposition in Berlin in 1896. He obtained premature infants from Berlin’s Charity Hospital and reportedly had great success in keeping them all healthy at the fair with the help of trained nurses and wet nurses. He repeated the exhibit in London where English doctors refused to allow their babies to be put on exhibit. No problem, he got preemies from Paris. Couney continued to exhibit incubators and babies at fairs, eventually immigrating to the United States where he set up a regular summer exhibit at Coney Island. His 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair exhibit was a grand affair with its own special building. By all accounts the babies received excellent treatment, so despite the icky sensationalism and questionable ethics, Couney saved lives with his incubator exhibits and educated doctors on the care of premature infants. He considered his life’s work complete and retired when the Cornell Medical Center in New York opened its own facility for preemies. (sources from Neonatology on the Web: 1939 New Yorker article, 1979 Pediatrics article)