Bernard Sachs was a Jewish-American neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

. After graduating with a B.A. from Harvard in 1878, Sachs travelled to Europe and studied under some of the most prominent physicians of the time, such as Adolf Kussmaul (1822-1902), Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen

Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen

Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen was a German pathologist who practiced medicine in Würzburg and Strassburg . Born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, he was the father of physiologist Heinrich von Recklinghausen ....

 (1833-1910), Friedrich Goltz

Friedrich Goltz

Friedrich Leopold Goltz was a German physiologist and nephew of the writer Bogumil Goltz.Goltz held various university positions in Königsberg, Halle and Strasbourg, Germany...

 (1834-1902), Rudolf Virchow

Rudolf Virchow

Rudolph Carl Virchow was a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician, known for his advancement of public health...

 (1821-1902), Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890), Theodor Meynert

Theodor Meynert

Theodor Hermann Meynert was a German-Austrian neuropathologist and anatomist who was born in Dresden.In 1861 he earned his medical doctorate, and in 1875 became director of the psychiatric clinic associated with the University of Vienna. One of his better known students in Vienna was Sigmund...

 (1833-1892), Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...

 (1825-1893), and John Hughlings Jackson

John Hughlings Jackson

John Hughlings Jackson, FRS , was an English neurologist.- Biography :He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest son of Samuel Jackson, a yeoman who owned and farmed his land, and the former Sarah Hughlings, the daughter of a Welsh revenue collector...

 (1835-1911). Later, in 1885, Sachs translated Meynert’s classic treatise Psychiatrie into English.

After returning to the United States, he settled into a private practice in New York, and became one of America's leading clinical neurologists. He was an instructor at New York Polyclinic Hospital, and a consultant at Mount Sinai Hospital

Mount Sinai Hospital, New York

Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. In 2011-2012, Mount Sinai Hospital was ranked as one of America's best hospitals by U.S...

 and Manhattan State Hospital

Manhattan State Hospital

The Manhattan Psychiatric Center is a New York-state run psychiatric hospital on 125th Street on Wards Island in New York City. As of 2009 it is licensed for 509 beds, but only holds around 200 patients. The current building is 17-stories tall....

. In addition, he was publisher of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease is a scholarly journal on psychopathology.Founded in 1874, it is the world's oldest independent scientific monthly in the field of human behavior. Articles cover theory, etiology, therapy, social impact of illness, and research methods.Editors:*1874-1881:...

 (1886-1911) and president of the American Neurological Association

American Neurological Association

The American Neurological Association, is a professional society with a mission of educating neurologists and physicians as well as increasing knowledge and enhancing treatment of diseases of the nervous system. It was founded in June 1875.-Officers:...

 (1894 and 1932).

The condition known as Tay-Sachs disease

Tay-Sachs disease

Tay–Sachs disease is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder...

 is named after Sachs along with English ophthalmologist Warren Tay

Warren Tay

Waren Tay was a British ophthalmologist who was a native of Yorkshire.In 1881 Waren Tay first described the red spot on the retina of the eye that is present in Tay-Sachs disease. He reported this condition in the Volume I edition of the Ophthalmological Society, an organization in which he was a...

. Tay first described the red spot on the retina

Retina

The vertebrate retina is a light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera. Light striking the retina initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical...

 of the eye in 1881, while Sachs described the cellular changes of the disease, and in 1887 noted its higher occurrence in Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...

 from Eastern Europe.

Sachs published several books, including Nervous and Mental Disorders from Birth through Adolescence, a reference work intended for professionals. In 1926 he published The Normal Child, a popular manual on child rearing intended for the general public. In the latter book he advocated a common-sense approach to parenting and the rejection of psychological theories, especially Freudian psychology.

His portrait was painted in the winter of 1914-15 by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury

Adolfo Müller-Ury

Adolfo Muller-Ury was a Swiss-born American portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life.-Heritage and early life in Switzerland:...

(1862-1947), but is presently unlocated.