May 6: The First American Children’s Clinic

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, who established the first children’s health clinic in the United States and pioneered the field of pediatrics, was born in Westphalia on this date in 1830. Jacobi was jailed for three years for his participation in the 1848 revolutionary movement in Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1853. His career here included professorships at the New York Medical College, in the medical department of the City University of New York, and at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he established the first pediatrics department at a general hospital in the U.S. In the course of his career, largely through his medical activism, pediatric clinics became fixtures of hospitals across the country. A lifelong socialist, Jacob corresponded with Karl Marx during the 1860s and was one of America’s earliest advocates of birth control. He studied and advocated breast-feeding, proposed safe breast-milk substitutes, and advocated the low-boiling of milk, which probably was the single greatest contribution before antibiotics to lowering infant mortality rates. Jacobi was the only foreign-born president of the American Medical Association in the AMA’s history. His wife, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, was author of more than 100 medical articles and a founder of the Consumer’s League in New York City.

“A child of three or four years may be saved by 100 or 200 ccm. of whiskey given daily, if by nothing else and escape the undertaker.” —Dr. Abraham Jacobi