SAMUEL JAMES MELTZER, 



Founder and First President (1903-05) of the Society for 

 Experimental Biology and Medicine. 



Samuel James Meltzer, the founder and first president of the 

 Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, was born at 

 Traup, in the Government of Kovno, Russia, on the 2 2d of March, 

 185 1. He attended schools in his native place and, later, at 

 Konigsberg in Prussia. In 1876 he entered the University of 

 Berlin, where he pursued studies in philosophy under Paulsen, 

 Benno Erdmann, Steinthal and others, and in medicine under von 

 Helmholtz, Du Bois-Reymond, Kronecker, Virchow, Frerichs, 

 Leyden and other teachers of that period. He graduated in 

 medicine at Berlin in 1882. A year later he moved to New York 

 and engaged in the active practice of medicine. 



Of great importance in regard to his subsequent career is the 

 fact that for about three years Dr. Meltzer worked on physiological 

 subjects in the Physiological Institute of Berlin, especially in its 

 "speziell physiologische Abtheilung," then under the direction of 

 Prof. Hugo Kronecker. The chief subject of the studies of this 

 period was an experimental analysis of the mechanism of swallow- 

 ing, which led to the now well known Kronecker-Meltzer theory 

 of deglutition. Although, for a period of more than twenty years 

 after this time, circumstances made it impracticable for Dr. Meltzer 

 to devote either his chief time or main energies to the laboratory, 

 yet, as his published works show, he continued to carry on ex- 

 perimental work and to produce important papers bearing upon 

 many topics in experimental and practical medicine, and in experi- 

 mental biology. 



The experimental part of his studies during the period of resi- 

 dence in New York was carried out in laboratories connected with 

 New York medical schools — the pathological laboratory of 

 Bellevue Hospital Medical College, and the pathological, physio- 

 logical and physiologico-chemical laboratories at the College of 



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