Václav Treitz: Anatomist and Troubled Patriot

Václav Treitz (1819-1872), the Czech surgeon-anatomist who described in 1853 the eponymous fibromuscular band that suspends the fourth portion of the duodenum from the right crus of the diaphragm, was a partisan for Bohemian independence from its historical subjugation under the Austrian Empire. As a professor of pathological anatomy at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, he insisted on his right to teach in Czech, the mother tongue of his students and their future patients, and not German, the official language of higher learning and government. Treitz was thus targeted as a troublemaker by a regime determined to crush nationalist impulses that threatened central authority. His colleagues pleaded with him to compromise; a recalcitrant Treitz boycotted faculty meetings and retreated into isolation. As political suppression tightened, he became despondent and frustrated, finally committing suicide in 1872. His dream of an independent Czech state had to survive two world wars and two murderous autocracies before it came true more than a century later with the creation of an independent Czechia in 1993.