In 1840, after only two years of his life spent in New York City, his family moved to Philadelphia. Solis-Cohen was educated at Central High School and the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College where he earned his medical degree in 1860. In 1861 he began his medical residency at Old Blockley in Philadelphia but resigned the same year to enlist as a private in the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was soon commissioned as a lieutenant in the infantry and later appointed as assistant surgeon in the Twenty-sixth Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers. After serving in Hooker's Brigade in the defense of Washington, D.C., he later transferred to the Navy as Acting Assistant Surgeon, serving under Rear Admiral S.F. DuPont, in the expedition to Port Royal Harbor, South Carolina, on the United States Steamer "Florida". He remained in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron until January 12, 1864, when he resigned from the Navy. After the Civil War, he began his work in the field of laryngology. In 1866, he was the first in the United States to institute regular lectures on laryngology at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. In 1870 he was appointed lecturer on laryngoscopy and diseases of the throat and chest in the Jefferson Medical College and two years later professor of laryngology. His first work on the subject, entitled “Inhalation in the Treatment of Disease”, was published in 1867, and was followed in 1872 by his great work “Diseases of the Throat and Nasal Passages."