AleÅ¡ Hrdlička (March 29, 1869 - September 5, 1943) :: Essays Papers

Ale Hrdlika (March 29, 1869 - September 5, 1943)Ale Ferdinand Hrdlika was born to Maximilian and Karolina (Wajnerov or Wagner) Hrdlika on March 29, 1869, in Humpolec, Bohemia, which is now Czechoslovakia (Gillispie, 527). His father was a respected master cabinetmaker who owned his own shop. The oldest of seven children, Hrdlika attended local schools and received private tutoring in Latin and Greek from Ludolfa Pejoch, a Jesuit priest who was attracted by the boys abilities (James, 371). He left high school in 1882 at the tender age of fourteen, to emigrate with his father to sweet York City, where the other members of his family later joined them (James, 371). Once in America, Hrdlika went to work with his father as a laborer in a cigar factory to help domiciliate to the family income. He attended the evening courses to learn English and to gain himself a high school equivalency diploma (Gillispie, 527). A serious attack of typhoid febrility at the age of 19 altered the cou rse of Hrdlikas life drastically. It is said that his attending physician, a trustee of the Eclectic Medical College in hot York, became interested in Hrdlika and persuaded him to undertake the study of medicine at the college. Graduating at the head of his class in 1892, he started a practice in modern Yorks Lower East Side. At the same time, to broaden his medical background, he began attending the New York Homeopathic Medical College, from which he graduated, again at the head of the class, in 1894 (James, 371). Shortly thereafter, he passed the Maryland State Medical Board (allopathic) examination, hoping to be able to join the staff of the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, but he gave up this plan to accept an offer of a research internship in the new State Homeopathic Hospital for the Insane at Middletown, New York.It was while he was in this position that he became interested in the application of anthropometry to medicine. Through his autopsies and examinations of the p atients, he became interested in whether physical characteristics and worn measurements might show systematic differences according to sex and type of insanity (James, 371). It was this interest which led to an invitation in 1896 to join a multidisciplinary research team world assembled by the histologist Ira Van Gieson (1866-1913) to staff the newly created Pathological Institute in New York City (Spencer, 503).