Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/628

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JACOBSON
606
JAMES

made for herself a high and permanent place. She was an active and industrious contributor to medical journals and to the archives of societies; her papers, numbering nearly a hundred, possessing, in addition to original scientific importance, a literary style rare in medical articles. From among her papers may be cited:

"Antagonism of Medicines" (Archives of Medicine, 1881); "Infantile Paralysis" ("Pepper's Archives of Medicine," 1885); "Primary Education" (Popular Science Monthly, 1886); "Some Considerations on Hysteria," 1888; "Acute Mania after Operations," 1889; "Spinal Myelitis, Meningitis in Children" ("Keating's Cyclopedia," 1890); "Brain Tumors" (Wood's Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences").

Dr. Jacobi died in 1906 of a meningeal tumor pressing on the cerebellum. In the seventh year of her ten years' illness she sent her friend, Dr. Charles L. Dana, a story of her symptoms which he pronounced "so lucid, so objective and yet so human that it would be a classic in medical writing." In January, 1907, the Woman's Medical Association of New York City held a memorial meeting for Mary Putnam Jacobi at the Academy of Medicine. In all the addresses from men and women eminent in medicine, reform and literature there was one dominant note, "her dedication to the work of helping her fellow mortals." A memorial tablet to her memory has been placed in the main hall of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Addresses by Drs. Blackwell. Cushier, Osler, Dana, by Mrs. Florence Kelley and by Richard Watson Gilder, in Memory of Mary Putnam Jacobi, N. Y. Academy of Medicine, Jan. 4, 1907.
Addresses by Drs. Welch, Galbraith and Mills, in Trans. Alumnæ Asso., Woman's Med. Coll. of Penn., 1907.
New York Medical Journal, June 16, 1906.
Personal knowledge and information, H. B. B. in The Woman's Journal, Boston, June 16, 1906.

Jacobson, Nathan (1857–1913)

Nathan Jacobson, born in Syracuse, New York, June 26, 1857, received his early training in the common schools and the high school of his native city and studied medicine with Dr. Roger W. Pease and in the College of Medicine of Syracuse University, graduating in 1877.

He continued his post-graduate studies in Vienna under such men as Strieker, Bilroth and Hebra, returning to practice in Syracuse in 1878. His grounding in laryngology secured him an appointment in his own college in 1885 as instructor, followed by the lectureship coupled with clinical surgery, ending in the professorship of laryngology and of clinical surgery in 1889. In 1892 he abandoned laryngology for clinical surgery alone.

He married Minnie Schwartz of Buffalo in 1884 and had one daughter and a son.

In 1906 he was elected to the professorship of clinical surgery in his alma mater, a position he held until he died. He was actively identified with the local state medical societies, and was a member of the American Surgical Association. He wrote much and delivered many addresses and was actively interested in broad public health questions, such as pure water, tuberculosis, hospital building and epilepsy. Much of his surgical work was done at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Jacobson was one of the important elements in the teaching force which conspired to give Syracuse its high rating in the country. He wrote the chapter on tubercular peritonitis in American Practical Surgery, edited by Bryant & Buck in 1910. (For other memoranda see Alumni record, Syracuse University 1872–1910, vol. iii, part I., page 436.)

Dr. Jacobson died while making a professional call Sept. 16, 1913, death being due to heart disease.

Memorial tribute to Nathan Jacobson by J. L. Heffron, New York State Jour. of Med., Oct., 1913.

James, Edwin (1797–1862)

Dr. James, who is best known among scientific men in this country as the botanist and historian of Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1820, under the auspices of the U. S. War Department, was born in Wey-bridge, Verment, August 27, 1797. His father was Deacon Daniel James, a native of Rhode Island who removed to Vermont about the beginning of the Revolutionary war. Edwin was the youngest of ten sons, three of whom became physicians. His early studies were conducted at home in the manner usual at that period, the summer months being devoted to the labors of the farm, the winter spent at the district school. He pursued his academic and collegiate course at Middlebury, Vt., where he was graduated in 1816. Subsequently he engaged in the study of medicine for three years under an elder brother, Dr. Daniel James, in Albany, N. Y. While pursuing his medical studies he was particularly interested in the natural sciences then taught by Professor Amos Eaton under the distinguished patronage of Stephen Van Rensselaer. In the spring of 1820 Dr. James was attached to the exploring expedition of Major Long as botanist and geologist, taking the place of Dr. Baldwin, who accompanied this expedition the