The Doctor Who Listened for the First Breath

In 1952, Dr. Virginia Apgar sat in the delivery room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and did something no physician had systematically done before. She watched newborns in their very first minute of life. While other doctors rushed past that sacred threshold between womb and world, Apgar slowed down. She listened to heartbeats, counted tiny breaths, studied the flush of color spreading across brand-new skin.…