Franz von Pitha

Franz Freiherr von Pitha, born Jiri Frantisek Pitha on 8 February 1810 in Rakom near Klatovy, in what is now the Czech Republic, and who died on 29 December 1875, was a Czech-Austrian surgeon. He took his medical doctorate at Prague in 1836 and became professor of surgery at Charles University, serving as its rector in 1854 and 1855, and later held the chair of surgery at the Josephinum in Vienna from 1857 to 1874. During the Italian Wars of Independence he was chief of field medical services, advanced Austrian military hygiene and gained experience of battle injuries, which led to his treatise on injuries and diseases of the extremities. With Theodor Billroth, whom he helped to bring to the Vienna faculty, he published a major textbook of general and specialized surgery. He was ennobled in 1859 and made a baron in 1875.