Scherzer’s Occupation

Carl Scherzer was never a physician. At least one source suggests that Scherzer was a lawyer, but his only documented employment was as a printer and as a statesman. The misconception that Scherzer was a physician flows from Scherzer’s self-assumed honorific in his 1857 edition of Popol Vuh and possibly began with Recinos’ 1947 Spanish edition and/or 1950 English translation.

References

Woodruff, John M. The “most futile and vain” Work of Father Francisco Ximénez: Rethinking the Context of Popol Vuh. Diss. U. Alabama, 2009.