Christian Fenger

Who was Christian Fenger?

Christian Fenger was a Danish-born surgeon, pathologist, and medical instructor. In the later half of his life, he worked at several medical institutions in Chicago, and became one of the most highly regarded surgeons in the United States.

Born to a farming family, Fenger studied engineering at the Copenhagen Polytechnic Institute before his father convinced him to pursue a medical degree at the University of Copenhagen. He gained experience as a surgeon during the Danish-Prussian War and Franco-Prussian War and received his MD in 1874. From 1875 to 1877, Fenger worked in Egypt, where he studied trachoma and schistosomiasis. However, he did not cope well with the Egyptian climate, and at the advice of a group of Americans he met in Cairo, he set off for the United States. He eventually settled in Chicago, which had a prominent Scandinavian community.

Fenger was invited to perform some autopsies at Cook County Hospital, and soon joined that hospital's surgical staff. He worked there until 1893, while also holding various teaching positions at the Chicago Medical College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago. From 1893 to 1899, Fenger worked as chair of surgery at the Chicago Medical College; he then became a professor of surgery at Rush Medical College. Fenger's lectures were very popular, and over the years, he trained several prominent physicians, including William James Mayo, Charles Horace Mayo, Nicholas Senn, James B. Herrick, Ludvig Hektoen, and Howard Taylor Ricketts.