A dinner in commemoration of the one-hundredth birthday of Dr. Abraham Jacobi, who was one of America’s outstanding medical men in the field of pediatrics, and who died in New York in 1919, was given at the New York Academy of Medicine, Friday night, under the auspices of a special committee with Professor Franz Boas as chairman. The speakers were Dr. J. A. Hartwell, Dr. William H. Welch, Dr. Fielding Garrison, Miss Lillian Wald and George McAneny. Dr. Mary Putnam, the widow of Dr. Jacobi, was among those present at the dinner.
Dr. Jacobi was born in 1830 in Hartum, Westphalia. He was the son of poor Jewish parents and obtained his education at the cost of much privation and struggle. He first matriculated as a student of Oriental languages, but soon became interested in medicine, graduating from the University of Bonn in 1851. The Revolution of 1848 drew him into its vortex, and because of his participation in that uprising he was imprisoned in a German fortress in Cologne for a period of two years.
In 1853, Jacobi was released from prison, and as he was facing a second charge, with the promise of more incarceration, he escaped to England. After a short stay in England he left for the United States, landing in Boston. In 1853, Jacobi, then 23 years old, came to New York and started to practice medicine. In 1857, Dr. Jacobi became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and in 1860 became the first professor of pediatrics in America, and at the same time opened the first pediatric clinic in the New York Medical College. Dr. Jacobi was regarded as the man who taught America how to feed its infants.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
