Foster Kennedy

Foster Kennedy was born in Belfast and educated at Queens College there. He served four years as resident medical officer at the National Hospital in London, which was then, and continues to be, the greatest school of neurology in the world. Then, in 1906, he came to New York and became chief of the clinic of the Neurological Institute.

Dr. Kennedy was more than an outstanding physician and neurologist. He was a scholar and a wit, a connoisseur and a philosopher, and conducted his conversation with a faint Irish brogue that gave it a foreign flavor delightful to listen to. The medical fraternity came to regard him as a modern Delphic oracle who always could be counted on to highlight the essentials of a subject with a trenchant quotable phrase. When he was to speak, the room was filled, for the show was sure to be good.

A fellow doctor once asked him to come and look at a patient suddenly attacked by a peculiar failure of eyesight. The patient was much perturbed and waited, after dinner, for Dr. Kennedy to come. The doctor says: “It was in the evening; he came in dinner clothes, wearing an opera cloak, and while examining the patient he wore a monocle. The performance was a work of art, and all the props did a great deal to reassure the patient and make him feel he was in the best of hands.”

Dr. Kennedy was a very great neurologist. His was a colorful personality characterized by imagination, audacity, and intellectual integrity. In debate his tongue was sharp, but he was always generous in giving credit to others and was marvelously stimulating to talk to or work with. His power of diagnosis in the neurological field was uncanny—and this because he was not only learned but also wise.

He got around very fast. He knew all the lively and amusing people of the City. He was a good influence on the rich and a kind friend to the poor. And he was the best company to be found anywhere.

George W. Martin
1953 Century Association Yearbook