Herff, Adolph, 1858-1952

Noted San Antonio surgeon. Dr. Herff received his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia in 1878. He returned to San Antonio in 1880 and began practice in association with his father, Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff. Dr. Adolph Herff remained in practice for fifty-five years, performing his last operation in 1933.

Dr. Adolph Herff was a noted San Antonio surgeon who practiced in San Antonio for fifty-five years. He was born July 30, 1858, in San Antonio, Texas, the fourth son of another famous Texas surgeon, Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff, a pioneer surgeon who first came to Texas from Germany in 1847, settling in San Antonio in 1850. Adolph performed his first surgery when he was only 12 years old, stitching up the bleeding scalp laceration of a drunken man lying in a gutter, surrounded by a crowd of incredulous people. His early education was obtained at the old German-English School and the Austin Military Institute in San Antonio, followed by attending a pre-medical course at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He received his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1880 then completed an additional semester of practical work in Philadelphia hospitals.

Dr. Herff returned to San Antonio and began practice with his father, an association which lasted over a quarter of a century. He married Wilhelmina Kalteyer, and they had 3 children, Adolph Paul, Ferdinand Peter, and Amy Clothilde. His surgical practice began just at the dawn of modern bacteriology and surgery. He was the first surgeon in San Antonio to use rubber gloves and catgut in the operating room. He did the first gastroenterostomy, the first total gastrectomy, the first prostatectomy and probably the first appendectomy in Southwest Texas. He lived at a time when bedside diagnosis was an art, depending on observation and common sense as mechanical and laboratory aids were few, yet he was an exact diagnostician. He was a charter member of the American College of Surgeons and performed his last operation in 1933. When he retired from medical practice, he moved to Boerne, Texas where he died February 19, 1952.

His son Ferdinand P. Herff, his nephew John B. Herff, his nephew August F. Herff, and numerous other members of the Herff family were also physicians and surgeons, continuing the Herff family medical tradition.

Sources:

Nixon, Pat Ireland. A century of medicine in San Antonio : the story of medicine in Bexar County, Texas. San Antonio, Tex: Privately published by the author, 1936.

Herff, Ferdinand Peter. The Doctors Herff : a Three-Generation Memoir / edited by Laura L. Barber. San Antonio, Trinity University Press, 1973.