Schwitalla, Alphonse M. 1882-1965

Father Alphonse M. Schwitalla, S. J., spent virtually his entire professional academic career at Saint Louis University. He became known throughout the world as a hospital and medical authority and educator during the first half of the 20th century. Alphonse Mary Schwitalla was born in Upper Silesia, Germany, in 1882, and he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, with his family in 1885. He attended the Academy or high school of Saint Louis University from 1895 to 1899, and in 1900, he entered the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus. He received his A.B. degree from Saint Louis University in 1907 and his A.M. degree from the University in 1908. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1915. In 1918, the Jesuits sent him to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he received his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1921. Schwitalla was the first Jesuit priest to study in the Biology Department at Johns Hopkins, and Johns Hopkins would later call Father Schwitalla one of its most "distinguished" alumni and "one of the five leading medical instructors" in the United States. He returned to Saint Louis University as an associate professor of biology, and he soon found himself director of the department and then regent of the School of Medicine in 1924. He was appointed dean of the School of Medicine in 1927, a position he held until his retirement for health reasons in 1948. Besides these positions, Father Schwitalla also held the following administrative positions at Saint Louis University: Regent, School of Dentistry, 1924-44; Acting Dean of the Graduate School, 1926-29; and Dean of the School of Nursing, 1929-44. He also served as president of the Catholic Hospital Association of the United States and Canada from 1928 to 1947, when he was named President Emeritus of the CHA. Father Schwitalla established the St. Mary's Group of Hospitals in 1924. These three hospitals together, St. Mary's Infirmary, St. Mary's Hospital, and Mount St. Rose Sanatorium, served as the University Hospital. In 1933 the newly completed Firmin Desloge Hospital supplanted St. Mary's Infirmary as the chief teaching center of the University's Medical School, and Father Schwitalla was instrumental in the opening of this hospital. Later in life Schwitalla suffered a great deal from ill health. In October, 1948, Father Schwitalla suffered a severe stroke that left him practically bedridden for the next six years. He died in 1965 at the age of 82 at St. Mary's Hospital.