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 his 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.