Jeff Baker, M.D., Ph.D. will present Technology, Hope, and Motherhood:  What We Can Learn from the History of the Infant Incubator.  At the turn of the last century, a new medical invention known as the infant incubator captured the imagination of physicians and the public.   The device became a public sensation and appeared in settings ranging from hospitals to world fairs midway side-shows (complete with live infants).   But in the process it set off a great controversy regarding whether so-called premature and weak infants should be rescued in the first place, and whether their care should be entrusted to mothers, physicians, or scientifically-trained nurses.

Dr. Baker is the Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine at Duke University. He is the author of The machine in the nursery : incubator technology and the origins of newborn intensive care and a world renowned authority on the history of the infant incubator.

Sponsored by the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library