Dr. Abraham Jacobi

Abraham Jacobi (May 6, 1830 - July 10, 1919) was a pioneer of pediatrics, opening the first children's clinic in the United States. To date, he is the only foreign born president of the American Medical Association.

Born in Hartum (now a district of Hille), Westphalia. He was the son of a poor Jewish shopkeeper and his wife who educated him at great sacrifice. He attended the gymnasium in Minden. After graduating there, he studied medicine at the universities of Greifswald, Göttingen, and Bonn, receiving an MD at Bonn in 1851. Shortly thereafter, Jacobi joined the revolutionary movement in Germany (see Revolution of 1848). He was detained in prisons at Berlin and Cologne in 1851, and eventually convicted of treason and imprisoned at Minden and Bielefeld until his discharge in the summer of 1853. Upon release, Jacobi sailed to England and then in the following autumn to New York where he settled as a practicing physician.

Starting in 1861 at the New York Medical College, he was a professor of childhood diseases. From 1867 to 1870, he was chair of the medical department of the City University of New York. He taught at Columbia University from 1870 to 1902. He later moved to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he established the first Department of Pediatrics at a general hospital.

He was president of the New York Pathological and Obstetrical Societies, and twice of the Medical Society of the County of New York, visiting physician to the German Hospital beginning 1857, to Mount Sinai Hospital beginning 1860, to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the infant hospital on Randall's Island beginning 1868, and to Bellevue Hospital beginning 1874. In 1882 he was president of the New York State Medical Society, and in 1885 became president of the New York Academy of Medicine. From 1868 to 1871, he was joint editor of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children.

Civic work was an important part of his life. He advocated birth control and civil service reform and opposed prohibition. He was strongly anti-Hohenzollern during World War I. In the summer of 1918, a house fire destroyed the manuscript of his autobiography and other personal papers at his Lake George home. He died the next year in the house of his friend Carl Schurz who had predeceased him.

He helped found the American Journal of Obstetrics.

His first wife, Fanny Meyer Jacobi (1833−1851), was a sister of Sophie Meyer Boas (1828−1916), the mother of ethnologist Franz Boas, who also attended the gymnasium in Minden. In 1873, he married Mary Putnam Jacobi, also a physician. She was the first woman student at L'École de Médecine in Paris, France. They had a daughter, Marjorie McAneny.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Jacobi

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, who established the first children’s health clinic in the United States and pioneered the field of pediatrics, was born in Westphalia on this date in 1830. Jacobi was jailed for three years for his participation in the 1848 revolutionary movement in Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1853. His career here included professorships at the New York Medical College, in the medical department of the City University of New York, and at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he established the first pediatrics department at a general hospital in the U.S. In the course of his career, largely through his medical activism, pediatric clinics became fixtures of hospitals across the country. A lifelong socialist, Jacob corresponded with Karl Marx during the 1860s and was one of America’s earliest advocates of birth control. He studied and advocated breast-feeding, proposed safe breast-milk substitutes, and advocated the low-boiling of milk, which probably was the single greatest contribution before antibiotics to lowering infant mortality rates. Jacobi was the only foreign-born president of the American Medical Association in the AMA’s history. His wife, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, was author of more than 100 medical articles and a founder of the Consumer’s League in New York City.

“A child of three or four years may be saved by 100 or 200 ccm. of whiskey given daily, if by nothing else and escape the undertaker.” —Dr. Abraham Jacobi

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