In the fall of 1871 Cornelius returned to America and arrived in Chicago , where his parents were living at the time , to witness the Great Chicago Fire . He was immediately charged with a medical sanitary mission in connection with , and during , its reconstruction . In 1872 , he was elected Chief Medical Officer of the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York . In 1873 he married in Boston the daughter of one of his patients , Bianca Saroni , and the following year they moved to San Francisco , where he was appointed a member of the Board of Health . Here he specialized in nervous illnesses and his attention was drawn to the adaptation of electricity to practical purposes and he founded the California Electrical Works . In September 1877 , with George Prescott , Thomas Edison signs an agreement with Stephen Field and Cornelius Herz regarding European quadruplex patents
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
Cornelius Herz