Abraham Jacobi

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 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.

Biography 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 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. 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.

He remained in contact with Marx and Engels and in 1857 Jacobi was involved in founding the New York Communist Club. Jacobi Medical Center in New York City was named in his honor William Osler, founder of 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).