This has been posted several times over the years. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23701556 seems to be the only previous discussion with comments though.
The best treatment of this historical topic in print is Dawn Raffel's The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: https://www.dawnraffel.com/drcouney
Dr. Couney also features in Raffel's fictional Boundless as the Sky: https://www.dawnraffel.com/boundlessasthesky
Imagine charging people to see medical procedures in hospitals. We can call it the hospital circus.
The invention of incubators and the idea to supply premature babies' underdeveloped lungs with oxygen is hard to underestimate.
Unfortunately for a short time after invention some doctors thought that more helps more and exposed the babies to very high oxygen concentrations without knowing that this hinders the development of the retina and leads to blindness. Probably the most well-known victim of this unfortunate phase is Steveland Morris aka Stevie Wonder.