Vnitr Lek 2018, 64(9):879-885 | DOI: 10.36290/vnl.2018.121

Otto Kahler and his family (on the 125th anniversary of his death): I. Ancestors

Pavel Čech

Kabinet dějin lékařství 3. LF UK, Praha

The 125th death anniversary of the famous internist Otto Kahler (1849-1893) offers an occasion to remind that, in the 19th and 20th centuries, his family with all roots of ancestors deeply taken in Bohemia enriched history of medicine with a line of five remarkable physicians in four consecutive generations. The first generation is represented by Otto's father Josef Kahler (1810-1870), the fourth of fifteen children of a farmer in Großdorf near Braunau in northeast Bohemia. He graduated from Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1838), worked as a surgical intern and an assistant at Prague Maternity Hospital, as a docent (1844) he announced lectures on acology and desmaturgy (1844-1846). He then became a police and forensic physician (1845); since 1846 he acted as a wound physician at the Provincial Prison as well as Provincial Forced-Labor House and Reformatory until his sudden death during a session of a charitable society (1870) shortly before his son Otto graduated from the father's alma mater (1971) to ripen into a pioneer personality whose name remains a lasting constituent of a synonym for multiple myeloma.

Keywords: Charles-Ferdinand University; genealogy; Joseph Kahler; Otto Kahler; Prague

Received: May 28, 2018; Published: September 1, 2018  Show citation