Ilza Veith was born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, May 13, 1915, studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna (1934-36). She came to the United States in 1937, and was naturalized in 1945. In the intervening years she received an MA at Hopkins (1944), and in 1947 was awarded the first U.S. PhD in the History of Medicine, by the Institute for the History of Medicine at Hopkins, where she had worked with Henry Sigerist. In 1975 she received the Igaku hakase (M.D., D.M.S.) from Juntendo University, Tokyo.

From 1949 to 1951 Dr. Veith was lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Chicago, becoming asst. professor (1953) and associate professor in 1963. The same year she was Sloan visiting professor at the Meninger School of Psychiatry. In 1964 she came to UCSF as professor of the history of medicine and vice-chair of the Dept. of the History of Medicine, a position she held until she became emeritus professor in 1979. She was also professor of the history of psychiatry from 1967-79.

Dr. Veith held many lectureships, among them the D.J. Davies lecturer (University of Illinois 1958)), John Shaw Billings lecturer (University of Indiana School of Medicine, 1963), George W. Corner lecturer (University of Rochester, 1970), Logan Clendenning lecturer (University of Kansas School of Medicine, 1971), and Hideyo Noguchi lecturer (Johns Hopkins University, 1977). She was a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine (council 1958-62;1973-77), the AAAS, the Society of the History of Medicine of Chicago (president 1954), Royal Society of Medicine, Germany Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology, and an honorary fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

She has contributed countless articles to periodical publications, and among her book titles are: Medicine in Tibet (1962); Hysteria: The History of A Disease (1965); The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (1966). Dr. Veith has also served on numerous journal editorial boards, including JAMA and the Encyclopedia Britannica.