Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1034

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1012
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SACHS 1012 SACHS fore the State Medical and other societies, but, from lack of appreciation of his own ability and learning, published few or none. In 1876, at the meeting of the International Congress of Physicians and Surgeons, Pro- fessor Gross introduced him as "the man,who, but for his extreme modesty, would have been the .leading surgeon of the world." A portrait is in possession of his grandson, Dr. John E. Russell. Starling Loving. Trans. Ohio Med. Soc. Columbus, 18S7. F. C. Larrimore. Sach«, Theodore Bernard (1868-1916) Physician, public health worker, and tuber- culosis specialist, whose untimely death, the result of political intrigue and injustice, re- tarded the progress of municipal tuberculosis work in Chicago, Theodore B. Sachs was born in Dinaberg, Russia, May 2, 1868, son of Bernard and Sophia Sachs, of Jewish faith. He graduated from the Kherson High School and received his degree in Law in 1891, from the Imperial New Russian University of Odessa. His removal to America in 1891 was doubtless prompted by a winter's exile, im- posed upon him and several fellow-students because of their participation in a debate ap- proved of by the local authorities. He ar- rived in Chicago in 1896, and as soon as pos- sible, was naturalized. His life in Russia made him a staunch defender of the oppressed, and a fearless, painstaking, tireless worker for the poor. Convinced that he could best serve the poor as a physician, he worked his way through the medical department of the University of Il- linois, receiving his degree in 1895. He re- ceived the highest Freshman honor, the Fac- ulty Medal, for the first year, and an appoint- ment as instructor in internal medicine (1901- 1904). He was secretary for the Imperial Russian Commissioner to the World's Fair. He was also employed for a short time at the Chicago Law Institute. After a two-years' internship at the Michael Reese Hospital, Dr. Sachs took an office at 12th and Halsted Streets in order to serve the sick poor, both in private practice and in the clinics of the Jewish Aid Dispensary. He died poor, though admittedly a leading diag- nostician, sanitarian and consultant, in the de- tection, treatment and prevention of tubercu- losis. From the first, he was interested in tuberculosis, so that a survey of his life be- comes as well a study of the tuberculosis movement in Illinois. He was an attending physician at Michael Reese and Cook County Hospitals; in 1915 a member of the Hygiene Reference Board of the Life Extension Institute, and in 1916 a Fellow of the Institute of Medicine of Chi- cago. In 1900, he established a tuberculosis clinic at the Jewish Aid Dispensary, the first in Chicago to he devoted exclusively to the ex- amination and treatment of pulmonary tuber- culosis ; here he served over ten years. In 1903 he began the first of three in- tensive studies of the prevalence and inci- dence of tuberculosis among children of tu- berculous parents in a small congested area near his office. The first two studies covered periods of 18 and 24 months; charts of these surveys made in collaboration with his wife, Sena Louise Wilson, received honorable men- tion at the International Tuberculosis Congress in Washington in 1908. The third report in- volved the study of several hundred chil- dren. (See the Journal of the American Medi- cal Association for October 24, 1908.) In 1905 he was attending physician for the Glencoe Camp, the first in Illinois for poor tuberculous patients. From these crude be- ginnings developed a winter camp at Dunning and the Edward Sanitarium at Naperville, of which he was director and examining physician from 1906 until his death. From this period on. Dr. Sachs gave the greater part of his time to his free tuberculous work, serving as director and president of the Chi- cago Tuberculosis Institute; from 1909 as sec- retary and president, respectively of the board of directors of the Municipal Tuberculous Commission ; as director, vice-president, chair- man of committees, and in 1915-16 as presi- dent of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis ; attending physician of the Chicago-Winfield Sanitarium, examining physician for the Jewish National Consumptives' Hospital in Denver ; founder and first president of the Robert Koch So- ciety for the Study of Tuberculosis, and chairman of various local committees in state, county and local tuberculosis work, both pub- licly financed. Two of the most important of these were a Committee on Factories, the first systematic campaign for medical examination of employees, covering in all more than 250,000 workers and an Advisory Committee on County Tuberculosis Institutions. Although one of the first men in Illinois to recognize the sociological and economic sig- nificance of tuberculosis, Dr. Sachs was pri- marily a physician.