Must Know
Starting from the end of the Ottoman period, continuing through the entire British Mandate, and in the first decades following the establishment of the State of Israel, there was an extraordinary woman who worked in Jerusalem. Her name was Dr. Helena Kagan, and she was the first pediatrician in pre-State Palestine. Kagan laid the foundations of pediatric medicine and socialized medicine in the country, making her a legendary figure. In the 1960’s, the Hebrew daily Maariv described her as “the woman who treated all of Jerusalem’s children – Jews and non-Jews alike, children who lived in the aristocratic neighborhood of Rehavia, and poor children who lived in the foul-smelling alleyways in the city, and even the children of the Mufti.”
