Nearly 500,000 babies are born prematurely each year in the U.S. And as LIFE.com points out, new technologies and practices are constantly evolving to care for these infants.
But what did preemie care look like 75 years ago? LIFE has featured images of premature babies and their nurses at the Boston Lying-In Hospital in 1939, as part of a larger story about preemies. The scene looks quite different from a modern NICU, but the photos reveal that the amount of love and care given to these little ones has remained the same.
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