Jacob!

phen G. Burbridge, sent across the lines into
the Confederacy, and forbidden to return under
penalty of death. Since a great outcry was im-
mediately raised in Kentucky, in order to pre-
vent trouble, Lincoln permitted him to return.
When he reached Frankfort he was received
with wild acclaim.

Having lost his first wife in January 1863 he
married, on June 6,1865, Laura Wilson of Lex-
ington. After the war he joined the Conservative
Democrats and ran for Congress in 1867 on their
ticket, but he was heavily defeated because he
had turned against the Union too late in the war.
By 1871 he had become a Republican. Although
through the rest of his life he held no public of-
fice, except the positions of judge of Oldham
County for a short time and park commissioner
for Louisville from 1895 to 1899, he continued
to enjoy a distinguished popularity in the com-
munity, was prominent in the Presbyterian
Church and was a loyal supporter of the Grand
Army of the Republic.

[The Biog. Encyc. of Ky. (1878) ; Thomas Speed,
The Union Cause in Ky. (1907) ; Lewis and R. H. Col-
lins, Hist, of Ky.t revised ed. (1874), vol. I; Who's Who
in America,, 1903-05 ; Sen. Exec. Doc. no. 16, 38 Cong.,
2 Sess. (1865); E. M. Coulter, The Civil War and
Readjustment in Ky. (1926) ; W. K. Anderson, Donald
Robertson and his Wife . . . their Ancestry and Pos-
terity (1900?) ; Courier-Journal (Louisville), Sept. 14,
r903.] E.M.C

JACOBI, ABRAHAM (May 6, iSao-July 10,
1919), physician, pediatrist, was born at Har-
tum-in-Minden, Westphalia, of poor Jewish par-
ents who educated him at a great sacrifice. In
1847 he graduated from the Minden Gymnasium
and at once entered the University of Greifs-
wald, where his original intention of studying
philology was soon changed for a medical ca-
reer. Having studied anatomy and physiology
here he next repaired to the University of Got-
tingen, where he came under the influence of
Frerichs, the clinician, and Wohler, a pioneer
in biochemistry. He removed finally to the Uni-
versity of Bonn, which gave him his medical
degree in 1851 after he had defended the Latin
thesis Cogitations de vita rerum naturalium.
No sooner had he secured his degree than he
plunged into the midst of the German Revolu-
tion of 1848, and for the next two years spent
most of his time in prison accused of lese-maj-
esty. In 1853 he escaped from detention at Min-
den (he had been confined previously at Cologne
and Berlin) and made his way to England via
Hamburg1. After a vain attempt to practise
medicine at Manchester he emigrated to Boston,
where a similar attempt to establish himself
likewise failed. His third attempt, in New York
City, proved successful, although he began his

Jacobi

career in a tenement-house section with fees of
twenty-five and fifty cents. From the first he
seems to have identified himself especially with
the ailments of infants and children. That he
preceded Garcia as the inventor of the laryngo-
scope has been stated, but Jacobi did not make
this claim, and Garcia was certainly the first to
win recognition for the device. Not long after
Jacobi's arrival in New York he began to con-
tribute to the New York Medical Journal, then
edited by Stephen Smith, his papers being chief-
ly abstracts, from German periodicals, of articles
on children's diseases. By 1857 he was so well
known as a pediatrist that with J. Lewis Smith
he was appointed lecturer on the pathology of
infancy and childhood at the College of Phy-
sicians and Surgeons. In 1859, with Emil
Noeggerath, he published Contributions to Mid-
wifery, and Diseases of Women and Children,
which was a financial failure. In 1860 he be-
came the first professor of diseases of children
in the country, at the New York Medical Col-
lege, thus taking precedence over Smith, who
was given the same chair at the new Bellevue
Hospital Medical College in 1861. In connec-
tion with his professorship Jacobi established
the first free clinic for diseases of children and
published his Report on the Clinic for Diseases
of Children, Held in the New York Medical Col-
lege, Session of 1860-61, the first report of its
kind. His Dentition and Its Derangements:
Course of Lectures in the New York Medical
College appeared in 1862. In 1865 he occupied
the chair of diseases of children in the medical
department of the University of the City of New
York, and in 1870 he was given the professor-
ship of pediatrics in the College of Physicians
and Surgeons. Here he taught until 1902, when
he was made professor emeritus. In 1894, upon
the death of Henoch, he received the honor of
an invitation to succeed him in the chair of pedi-
atrics at Berlin but declined by reason of his
pronounced democratic viewpoint. He practised
medicine in New York for nearly sixty-six years
and by no means did he limit his enormous prac-
tice to children, for his waiting rooms were
crowded with people of all ages and he was much
in demand as a medical consultant. So great
was his vitality that at the age of eighty-eight
he attended the meeting of the American Medi-
cal Association at Chicago and took an active
part in the proceedings. His death was doubtless
hastened by the burning of his summer home at
Lake George, when he narrowly escaped death
and lost his priceless collection of documents
and notes for publication—one of the greatest
misfortunes the medical profession of the United

563