Jelliffe, Smith Ely (27 October 1886–25 September 1945), neurologist, psychoanalyst, and medical editor, was born in New York City, the son of William Munson Jelliffe and Susan Emma Kitchell, both teachers. Jelliffe entered the civil engineering program at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and left without graduating in 1886 to enroll in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. He received his M.D. with honors in 1889 and interned for a year at St. Mary’s Hospital, Brooklyn, after which he traveled to Europe for a year. There he studied medicine and botany and visited cultural and historical sites. On his return in 1891, Jelliffe opened a general practice in his parents’ home in Brooklyn. To pay off his debts he did part-time clinical and pathological work in a hospital. His botanical studies in Europe had also qualified him to be a sanitary inspector for the Brooklyn Board of Health and to teach materia medica and botany at the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy at night. In 1894 Jelliffe married his longtime fiancée, Helena Dewey Leeming. The couple moved to New York City where they had five children. A year after his wife’s sudden death in 1916, he married Belinda Dobson; they had no children....
