JACOBI, ABRAHAM physician, was born at Hartum, Westphalia (Germany), on May 6, 1830, and educated at the Gymnasium of Minden and the Universities of Griefswald, Gottingen and Bonn (M.D., 1851). Because he participated in the German revolutionary movement he was imprisoned, 1851-53, in Berlin and Cologne for "high treason." Upon his release he came to the United States and began practice in New York city. In 186o he became professor of children's diseases at the New York Medical college, holding the first chair in the subject founded in the United States. From 1865-70 he was professor of children's diseases in the medical department of New York university, and from 1870 to 1903 in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia university, becoming professor emeritus in 1903. He was physician to the German hospital, beginning in 1857, to Mount Sinai, 186o-83, to Bellevue Babies Orthopaedic, beginning 1874, to Roosevelt hos pital, beginning 1898, and consulting physician to many others and to the New York city department of health. He established
the first special clinic for diseases of children in the country in New York city in 1862 and later established many others. He taught and wrote on his specialty for more than half a century, is ranked among the foremost authorities on the diseases of children, and is considered the founder of pediatrics in America.
He died at Bolton Landing, N.Y., on July io, 1919.
His more important books were Dentition and Its Derangements (1862) ; Infant Diet (1872) ; Treatise on Diphtheria (188o) ; Intestinal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1887) ; Pathology of the Thymus Gland (1889) ; Therapeutics of Infancy and Childhood (1896). His many scientific articles, miscellaneous writings and addresses are to be found in the eight volumes of Collectanea Jacobi, W. G. Robinson, ed. (1909).
See F. H. Garrison, "Abraham Jacobi," Annals of Medical History, vol. ii. (1919).