Arnold Klebs

Arnold C. Klebs (1870 to 1943) was a Swiss physician who specialized in the study of tuberculosis. Born in Bern, the son of the bacteriologist Edwin Klebs, he grew up among scientists, artists and historians and was in his teens one of Switzerland's pioneer bicycle racers. He took his medical degree at the University of Basel in 1896, then moved to the United States, where he worked for a year with William Osler at Johns Hopkins University. He later directed a sanatorium and practised as a tuberculosis specialist in Citronelle, Alabama and in Chicago, and was named one of the first directors of the National Tuberculosis Institute. In 1910 he returned to Switzerland and settled in a villa on Lake Geneva. In 1939 he gave his collection of books, including incunabula, plague tracts, herbals and some 3,000 texts on tuberculosis, to Harvey Cushing for what became the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale.