Ferdinand Ludwig Herff

Ferdinand Ludwig Herff (1820 to 1912) was a German-born physician who emigrated to Texas and became a medical pioneer in San Antonio. Born in Darmstadt on 29 November 1820, he studied at the universities of Berlin and Bonn and completed his medical education at Giessen in 1843, then served a surgical internship with the army of Hesse, where he learned techniques in plastic surgery and the treatment of tuberculosis. With Gustav Schleicher and Hermann Spiess he founded the Socialistic Colony and Society, which planned communes in Texas under the Adelsverein and included the Bettina commune. He established a home and medical practice in San Antonio in 1850, pioneered the use of chloroform as early as 1854, became a charter member of the Texas Medical Association in 1853, served as San Antonio health officer in 1860 and as a Confederate States Army surgeon, and helped the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word establish Santa Rosa Infirmary, the city's first hospital. He died in San Antonio on 18 May 1912.