The Infant Incubator in Europe (1860-1890)

In the nineteenth century, obstetricians in Europe began to construct devices to incubate infants in increasingly controlled environments. The infant incubator is a medical device that maintains stable conditions and a germ free environment for premature infants born before the thirty-seventh week of pregnancy. Records show that physicians had used infant incubators since 1835. However, Jean-Louis-Paul Denuce, a physician who worked in Bordeaux, France, first published about incubator technology in 1857. Carl Crede released his incubator model in Germany in 1860 and Stephane Tarnier further developed the model in 1884. The infant incubator technology provides a stable environment for premature infants and helps keep them alive.