A review by wordswritinstarlight
The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies by Dawn Raffel

emotional funny informative inspiring slow-paced

5.0

I love weird medical history and “baby shows on Coney Island” is a sentence I was immediately on board for, so I’ll admit that I wasn’t hard to win over with this one.  That being said, the author does a great job of balancing equal parts humor and sincerity, which I think Dr. Couney would have appreciated under the circumstances.  This book is almost as much about her struggle to actually find the information she includes as it is about the information itself, and both sides of the story paint a very warm, fond picture of tenuous human connections becoming literally life-saving.  I was totally fine through the whole book and then at the end (literally the last pages) the author discusses

a woman who she met and spoke to about Dr. Couney—the woman died at 98, and was buried with her identical twin, who had lived less than 20 minutes.

And I’ll admit that that made me cry a little.

Recommended for people interested in weird stories about medical advancements being soundly rejected.  Do you know who Ignaz Semmelweis is?  If yes, you will like this book.  Alternatively, if you read the Poisoner’s Handbook, I think this appeals to a similar crowd.