Background
Charles was born on December 25, 1861 in Krementchug, government of Poltava, Ukraine, the son of Samuel David Spivakowsky and his wife, Deborah Adel Dorfman.
Charles was born on December 25, 1861 in Krementchug, government of Poltava, Ukraine, the son of Samuel David Spivakowsky and his wife, Deborah Adel Dorfman.
From his father and the Cheder, a Jewish school, he received the traditional Hebrew education, while he was self-educated in secular subjects. He took and passed successfully the examination of the local Gymnasium, and continued his private studies.
Settling in Philadelphia, he studied medicine at the Jefferson Medical College, was graduated with the M. D. degree in 1890, and then attended lectures at the University of Berlin, 1891-92.
Joining the Kiev group, "Am Olam, " a society of young intellectuals who planned to emigrate to America and establish themselves there as agriculturists on a communal basis, Spivak arrived in the United States in March 1882. Ignorant of the language and without means, he started out as a laborer, loading and unloading freight in railroad yards, paving Fifth Avenue in New York City, working in wool and cotton mills in Maine, as a typesetter on the Jewish Messenger, and as a farm-hand in Alliance, New Jersey, where he later taught.
Two years later he was appointed chief of the clinic for gastro-intestinal diseases at the Philadelphia Polyclinic. From 1896 to 1901 he was associate professor in the department of medicine of the University of Denver; professor of anatomy, 1897-98; and then professor of clinical medicine and chief of the clinical laboratory at Denver and Gross College of Medicine, 1900-07. He was president of the Colorado Medical Library Association, 1902; librarian of the Denver Academy of Medicine, and a member of numerous medical societies. In 1920 he was delegated by the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers to study health and sanitation conditions among the Jews in the devastated war areas of Europe.
From the inception until his death Spivak acted as secretary and gastro-enterologist to the Sanatorium. The locality of the Sanatorium Buildings was named Spivak, Colorado, in his honor after his death. Notwithstanding his onerous professional and communal duties as physician and social worker, Spivak found time for a many-sided literary activity.
He wrote with equal facility in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and English. Even during his early years of struggle he contributed to the Woskhod (Russian) and Hameliz (Hebrew), both in St. Petersburg, as well as to Yiddish and Anglo-Jewish periodicals in the United States.
His familiarity with the Hebrew sources led him to make many interesting contributions to the history of early medicine. For the Jewish Daily Forward of New York City he wrote a series of popular articles on hygiene and longevity from a Jewish standpoint.
He died in 1927.
Spivak was married to Jennie (Gittel) Charsky in Philadelphia in 1893. She survived him with one son and two daughters.