Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen: America's first head and neck surgeon

Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen was a Renaissance physician and healer, who possessed great technical and intellectual skills. He was a self-made specialist in aerodigestive tract disease at a time when this was generally perceived as charlatanism. Unlike his contemporaries in laryngology, he was a trained surgeon, and he believed strongly that the laryngologist should be capable of doing his own surgery. Solis-Cohen was not a general surgeon who did work in the head and neck, but rather the first general surgeon who became a specialist in diseases of the upper air and food passages. His educational development is the model by which today's conventional paradigm in the training of Head and Neck Surgeons is designed. He fathered a medical and surgical specialty in America from its infancy in the 19th century until it was firmly grounded in the beginnings of this century. Just as Mosher was known as the "Chief" in the first half of this century, Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen had been designated the "Nestor" and "Chief" in laryngology many decades earlier. He died 2 months shy of 90 years on December 22, 1927.