09/05/2026
Neonatal care didn’t begin in a NICU.
It began, in part, with a very basic problem: premature babies could not stay warm. In the late 1800s, French obstetrician Stephane Tarnier was trying to improve the terrible odds facing babies born too soon. After seeing an incubator being used to hatch chicks at a Paris zoo, he began to wonder if the same idea could help premature infants.
Around 1880-1881, Tarnier introduced an infant warming chamber at the Paris Maternite. It looked nothing like the sophisticated incubators we know today. But the results were hard to ignore. Among babies weighing less than 2,000 grams, mortality fell from about 66% in 1879 to 38% in 1882.
A wooden box. Warm air. One basic need being met more effectively. And more premature babies surviving.
Before ventilators, surfactant, pulse oximetry, and all the technology surrounding premature babies today, neonatal medicine had to answer a much simpler question:
How do we keep this tiny baby warm enough to survive?
The NICU wasn’t built all at once. It grew from everything we learned about what these tiny babies needed to survive.
And keeping babies warm was only the beginning. 🧡
