View source for Abraham Jacobi

{{Short description|American pediatrician (1830–1919)}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Abraham Jacobi
| image              = Abraham Jacobi 1912.jpg
| image_size         = 
| caption            = Jacobi in 1912
| birth_name         = 
| birth_date         = {{Birth date|1830|5|6|df=yes}}
| birth_place        = Hartum, [[Province of Westphalia|Westphalia]], [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussia]]
| death_date         = {{Death date and age|1919|7|10|1830|5|6|df=yes}}
| death_place        = [[Bolton Landing, New York]], U.S.
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| spouse             = {{plainlist|
*{{marriage|Fanny Meier||17 September 1856|end=d}}
*{{marriage|Kate Rosalie Dessafo|2 June 1862|27 April 1871|end=d}}
*{{marriage|[[Mary Putnam Jacobi|Mary Putnam]]|1873|10 June 1906|end=d}}
}}
| partner            = 
| children           = 8<ref>[https://juedisches-leben.kommunalarchiv-minden.de/getperson.php?personID=I0628&tree=jews Nachkommen von Abraham Jacobi (in German)]</ref>
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}}
[[File:Jacobi Medical Center, The Bronx (aerial view, 2007).jpg|thumb|right|[[NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi|Jacobi Medical Center]] in New York City]]
'''Abraham Jacobi''' (6 May 1830 – 10 July 1919) was a German physician and pioneer of [[pediatrics]]. He was a key figure in the movement to improve child healthcare and welfare in the United States<ref name=ActaPaediatrica /> and opened the first [[pediatric|children's]] clinic in the country.<ref name=obit>{{cite news |title=Dr. Abraham Jacobi Dies Suddenly At 89. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1919/07/12/archives/dr-abraham-jacobi-dies-suddenly-at-89-dean-of-american-medical.html |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=12 July 1919 |accessdate=2012-11-17}}</ref> To date, he is the only foreign-born president of the [[American Medical Association]]. He helped found the ''American Journal of Obstetrics''. He is regarded as the ''Father of American Pediatrics''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/jacobi/html/second_level/geninfo.html |title=Jacobi Medical Center |publisher=City of New York |accessdate=2006-04-06 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060418235455/http://www.nyc.gov/html/hhc/jacobi/html/second_level/geninfo.html |archive-date=2006-04-18 |df=mdy-all}}</ref>

==Biography==
Born in Hartum (now a district of [[Hille, Germany|Hille]]), [[Westphalia]], he was the son of a poor Jewish shopkeeper and his wife,<ref name="anb">{{Cite ANB|title=Jacobi, Abraham|volume=11|pages=782–784|author=Lawrence M. Gartner |id=1200448}}</ref> who educated him at great sacrifice.<ref name="dab">{{Cite DAB|title=Jacobi, Abraham|volume=V, Part 1|pages=563–564|author=Edward Preble}}</ref> He attended the [[Gymnasium (school)|gymnasium]] in [[Minden]]. After graduating there, he studied medicine at the universities of [[University of Greifswald|Greifswald]], [[University of Göttingen|Göttingen]], and [[University of Bonn|Bonn]], receiving a [[Doctor of Medicine]] 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, where he was acquitted as defendant in the [[Cologne Communist Trial]] in 1852. Later he was imprisoned at [[Bielefeld]] and Minden, where he was convicted of [[lese Majeste]] in 1853.

Upon release, Jacobi sailed to England, where he stayed with both [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]].<ref name=Miller>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Julie|title=Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City|url=https://archive.org/details/abandonedfoundli00mill|url-access=limited|date=2008|publisher=New York University Press|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/abandonedfoundli00mill/page/n192 178]}}</ref> In the following autumn he moved to New York City where he settled as a practicing physician. He soon became a key figure in the movement to improve child healthcare and welfare in the United States.<ref name=ActaPaediatrica>{{cite journal |last1=Kutzsche |first1=S. |title=Abraham Jacobi (1830–1919) and his transition from political to medical activist |journal=[[Acta Paediatrica]] |date=2021 |volume=110 |issue=8 |pages=2303–2305 |doi=10.1111/apa.15887 |pmid=33963612|s2cid=233998658}}</ref>

He remained in contact with Marx and Engels and in 1857 Jacobi was involved in founding the [[New York Communist Club]].<ref name=Miller/>

Starting in 1861 at [[New York Medical College]], he was a professor of childhood diseases. From 1867 to 1870, he was chair of the medical department of the [[University of the City of New York]]. He taught at [[Columbia University]] for 30+ years from 1870 to 1902. He later moved to [[Mount Sinai Hospital, New York|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, New York|Mount Sinai Hospital]] beginning 1860, to the [[Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York|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 for [[birth control]] and [[civil service reform (disambiguation)|civil service reform]], and opposed [[prohibition]]. Jacobi was strongly anti-[[Hohenzollern]] during [[World War I]].<ref name="dab"/> In the summer of 1918, a house fire destroyed the manuscript of his autobiography, and other personal papers at his [[Lake George (town), New York|Lake George]] home.

He died on 10 July 1919 at his summer home in [[Bolton Landing]] at age 89.<ref name=obit/><ref name="anb"/> Jacobi is interred at [[Green-Wood Cemetery]] in [[Brooklyn]], New York.

==Family==
His first wife, Fanny Meier (1833−1856), 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|Mary Putnam]], also a physician. She was the very first female student at the {{ill|Faculté de Médecine de Paris|fr}} in Paris, France. They had three children, only one of whom—Marjorie—survived to adulthood.

==Works==
*''Contributions to Midwifery and Diseases of Women and Children'' (with E. Noeggerath; New York, 1859)
*''Dentition and its Derangements'' (1862)
*''The Raising and Education of Abandoned Children in Europe'' (1870)
* ''Infant Diet'' (1874)
*''Treatise on Diphtheria'' (1880)

Jacobi contributed chapters on the care and nutrition of children, diphtheria, and dysentery to Gerhardt's ''Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten'' (Tübingen, 1877), and on diphtheria, rachitis, and laryngitis to Pepper's ''System of Practical Medicine'' (Philadelphia), and has published lectures and reports on midwifery and female and infantile disease, and a number of articles in medical journals. His ''Sarcoma of the Kidney in the Fœtus and Infant'' is printed in the ''Transactions'' of the International Medical Congress in [[Copenhagen]].

==Legacy==
*Abraham Jacobi and [[Carl Schurz]] Memorial Park in [[Bolton Landing, New York]]
*A collection of his papers is held at the [[United States National Library of Medicine|National Library of Medicine]] in Bethesda, Maryland.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://findingaids.nlm.nih.gov/repositories/ammp/resources/jacobi094|title=Abraham Jacobi Papers 1890-1893|publisher=National Library of Medicine}}</ref>
*[[NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi|Jacobi Medical Center]] in New York City was named in his honor
*[[William Osler]], founder of [[Johns Hopkins School of Medicine|Johns Hopkins Medicine]], said of Abraham Jacobi, "''It may be said that the safety of a nation depends on the care of its infants and no one in this country has done so much for their bodily welfare as Dr. Jacobi. Had they any other language but a cry, countless thousands of colic-stricken babies...would ordain great praise to him'' " on 6 May 1900 (Jacobi's 70th birthday).

==See also==
*[[NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi|Jacobi Medical Center]] in [[the Bronx]], New York
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==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
*{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Jacobi, Abraham|year=1892}}

==External links==
*{{Commons category-inline}}
*{{Wikisource author-inline}}
*{{Internet Archive author |sname=Abraham Jacobi}}

{{American Medical Association Presidents}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobi, Abraham}}
[[Category:1830 births]]
[[Category:1919 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century German Jews]]
[[Category:People from Minden-Lübbecke]]
[[Category:New York Medical College faculty]]
[[Category:New York University Grossman School of Medicine faculty]]
[[Category:Columbia Medical School faculty]]
[[Category:American pediatricians]]
[[Category:American people of German-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:German pediatricians]]
[[Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery]]
[[Category:University of Göttingen alumni]]
[[Category:University of Greifswald alumni]]
[[Category:University of Bonn alumni]]
[[Category:German-American Forty-Eighters]]
[[Category:People from Bolton Landing, New York]]
[[Category:People from Lake George, New York]]
[[Category:American communists]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Pediatric Society]]
[[Category:Bellevue Hospital physicians]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Medical Association]]