Arpad Geza Charles Gerster.

Mayo, William James, 1861-1939.

Date:: 1925

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Arpad Geza Charles Gerster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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ROY MOODIE COLLECTION. Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS April, 1925, pages 582-584 ARP AD GEZA CHARLES GERSTER By WILLIAM J. MAYO, M.D., F.A.C.S., Rochester, Minnesota ~PAD GEZA CHARLES GERSTER was born December 22, 1848, in Kassa, Hungary, now Czecho-Slovakia, and died at his home in New York City, March 11, 1923. He received his early education in the schools of his native town, chiefly under the teaching order of white Premonstratensians. He graduated in medicine from Vienna in 1872, and arrived in America March 9, 1873- Gerster was the first man in New York to practice surgery exclusively. In 1878, when he was thirty years of age, he was appointed attending surgeon to the German Hospital, New York, and two year later to a similar position at Mount Sinai Hospital. From 1882 to 1895 he held one of the two chairs of surgery at the New York Polyclinic Medical School. Practitioners came to this institution from all parts of the United States for graduate instruction. Other positions of note held by Dr. Gerster were: fellow, New York Surgical Society, 1884; member, Century Association, 1890; president, New York Surgical Society, 1891; consulting surgeon, German Hospital, 1896; vice-president, Ameri¬ can Surgical Association, 1908; president, Charaka Club, New York, 1909; pro¬ fessor of clinical surgery, Columbia University, New York, 1916; president, American Surgical Association, 1911-1912; consulting surgeon, Mount Sinai Hos¬ pital, 1914; and trustee, New York Academy of Medicine, 1916. In 1902 Dr. Gerster was asked, informally, if, in event it should be offered, he would accept one of the two chairs of surgery at the University of Budapest. This was declined because, as he afterward said, “I had become heart and soul an American. Where my name and reputation were made, there I proposed to serve to the end of my allotted time.” About 1894, the Austro-Hungarian Government decorated Gerster with the Order of Francis Joseph, in recognition of his great charity to poor Hungarian immigrants. A few years later, in 1906, following political action by Austria to Hungary, which he considered unjust, he returned the decoration, maintaining that if he kept it, his independence of thought and speech would be hampered, an action most typical of him. These brief reminiscences with regard to one of the great surgeons of the world, will seem hackneyed to those who knew and loved the man, and who were in¬ timately acquainted with the originality and richness of his wisdom. 1 Published by Surgical Pub. Co., Chicago, U.S.A.