The New International Encyclopædia/Jacobi, Abraham

JACO'BI, Ger. pron. yă-kō'bḗ, Abraham (1830—). An eminent German-American physician, born at Hartum, Westphalia, Germany. He studied at the universities of Greifswald, Göttingen, and Bonn, obtaining his degree in medicine from the last-named institution. Having been an active participant in the struggle for free Germany in 1848 and thereafter. Jacobi was prosecuted for treason and was kept in Prussian prisons from 1851 to 1853. In the latter year, after spending a few months in Manchester, England, he came to America, and established himself in New York City. In 1857 he took an active part in founding the German dispensary. In 1860 he was chosen to fill the first chair of diseases of children instituted in this country, that of the New York Medical College. In 1865 he was elected to fill a similar chair in the medical department of the University of the City of New York. In 1868 he took part in founding the German Hospital of New York. His position at New York University he occupied till 1870, when he was chosen clinical professor of the diseases of children in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. New York City (medical department of Columbia University). The latter position he retained until his resignation in 1902, when he was made professor emeritus. He was the first to establish, in New York City, systematic and special clinics for the diseases of children, and very largely to him is due the recognition of pediatries as a distinct branch of medicine. In 1895 he was urged to leave New York and become professor of pediatrics in the University of Berlin, but he declined the honor. He was for many years consulting physician to the New York City Department of Health, to the J. Hood Wright Memorial Hospital, and to the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, and visiting physician to the Nursery and Child's Hospital. He served as physician to the Mount Sinai Hospital from 1860, to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum from 1868, to Bellevue Hospital from 1873, and to Roosevelt Hospital from 1898.

Dr. Jacobi's writings are very numerous. A great number of his papers, principally on diseases of women and children, were published in medical and other periodicals in this country and in Germany.

Among his book-form publications are: Cogitationes de Vita Rerum Naturalium (1851); Dentition and Its Derangements (1862); Infant Diet (1873; 3d ed. 1875); A Treatise on Diphtheria (1880); The Intestinal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1887); Therapeutics of Infancy and Childhood (1895; 2d ed. 1897). His contributions to Noeggerath and Jacobi's Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children (1859), and his “Hygiene und Pflege der Kinder,” in Gerhardt's Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten (1877), are most noteworthy. In 1893 he published two volumes of miscellaneous essays and addresses on a variety of subjects, mostly medical, under the title Anfsätze, Vorträge und Reden (1893). In 1873 he was married to Miss Mary C. Putnam, of New York, herself a noted physician, author, and teacher. See Jacobi, Mary Putnam.