Gerley (Hardlicska) János

* Holics, 1816 ? – † Bratislava, May 20, 1867 / physician, researcher of cretinism in Csallóköz ; ; Little is known about his life. He Hungarianized his original surname (Hardlicska) to Gerley in 1848. He obtained his doctorate in medicine at the University of Pest in 1841, his dissertation was on eye diseases (Dissertatio inaug. ophtalmologica agens de diagnosi morbum oculi analogorum, facileque invicem permutandorum). He was a district physician in Bratislava – and for a short time in 1861 he was also the chief physician of Bratislava County – and he also dealt with public health issues and was a member of the 11th Congress of Hungarian Doctors and Naturalists held in Bratislava in 1865. At his traveling assembly, he gave a lecture that caused a great resonance on the “land disease” that was taking on massive proportions in Csallóköz, the “stupidity”, which is better known in the literature as cretinism. He considered the cause of the disease to be partly hereditary, but also linked it to nutrition and environmental effects. (It was not yet recognized that it could be related to iodine deficiency.) He proposed a census of people with intellectual disabilities and their institutionalization to spare them from the ridicule of their environment.