Ilza Veith

Ilza Fanny Veith (born Ilza Hirschmann, May 13, 1912, Ludwigshafen – June 8, 2013, Tiburon, California) was a German-born, American historian of medicine, specializing in the history of psychiatric medicine and East Asian medicine. She taught at the University of Chicago 1949–1963 and the University of California, San Francisco 1964–1979. She was particularly known for her translation and analysis of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing) (1949) and her book Hysteria: The History of a Disease (1965).

Early life and education

Veith was born Ilza Hirschmann in Ludwigshafen on May 13, 1912, the daughter of Jewish parents, the schnapps manufacturer Gustav Hirschmann (1882–1945) and Minna Hertz Hirschmann. From 1934 to 1936 she studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna. In 1935, she married the lawyer Hans von Valentini Veith, whose father Dr. Julius Veith was a Jewish convert to Lutheranism. Hans and Ilza Veith fled in 1935 to Italy and in 1937 emigrated to the US, where they settled in Baltimore. Both of them became naturalized American citizens in 1945.

At the Institute for the History of Medicine of Johns Hopkins University, Ilza Veith graduated in 1944 with an M.A. and in 1947 with a Ph.D. in the history of medicine. She was the first person to receive in the United States a Ph.D. specifically in the history of medicine. At Johns Hopkins, her mentor and doctoral advisor was Henry E. Sigerist, who suggested that her Ph.D. thesis should be the translation and analysis of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing, 黃帝內經).

Career

At the University of Chicago, Ilza Veith taught and did research in the history of medicine. From 1949 to 1951 she was a lecturer; she was an assistant professor from 1953 to 1963. In 1963 she was a Sloan visiting professor at the Meninger School of Psychiatry. At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), she was a professor of the history of medicine and vice-chair of the Department of the History of Medicine from 1964 to 1979, when she retired as professor emerita. At UCSF she was also from 1967 to 1979 a professor of the history of psychiatry.

Professor Veith held several lectureships, including the D.J. Davies lectureship (University of Illinois, 1958), the John Shaw Billings lectureship (Indiana University School of Medicine, 1963), the George W. Corner lectureship (University of Rochester, 1970), Logan Clendenning lectureship (University of Kansas School of Medicine, 1971), and the Hideyo Noguchi lectureship (Johns Hopkins University, 1977). In 1974 she gave the American Association for the History of Medicine's Garrison Lecture. She served on the council of the American Association for the History of Medicine from 1958 to 1962 and from 1973 to 1977. She contributed numerous articles to refereed journals and was the author or coauthor of several books. Her 1965 book Hysteria: The History of a Disease is widely read and has become a minor classic. She served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Ilza Veith papers include correspondence with a number of noteworthy people, including John Z. Bowers (1913–1993), Francis J. Braceland (1900–1985), Ronald Chen (b. 1931; author of Foreign medical graduates in psychiatry: issues and problems), Morris Fishbein, Chauncey D. Leake, Helen Vincent McClean (1894–1983), Frank William Newell (1916–1998), and John Bertrand deCusance Morant Saunders (1903–1991).

Veith was fluent in five languages: German, French, English, Chinese, and Japanese. In 1975 she received the title of Iguka Hakase (Honorary Doctor of Medical Science) from the Medical School of Juntendo University. By donating a number of her Japanese medical books, she helped to build UCSF's East Asian medicine collection.

Personal life and death

In 1964, Veith suffered a stroke which caused her to be hemiplegic for the remainder of her life. In 1988 the University of California Press published her account of the stroke and its effects on her life: Can You Hear the Clapping of One Hand? Learning to Live with a Stroke. According to Sandra W. Moss, M.D., the book "remains a classic of its genre".

Veith married lawyer and World War I veteran Hans von Valentini Veith on October 20, 1935, and remained married to him until he died on March 9, 1991.

She died on June 8, 2013, at home in Tiburon, California.

Selected publications

References