The Pischel Library was established in the late 1960's by the San Francisco Bay Area ophthalmic community to honor their esteemed colleague, Dohrmann Kaspar Pischel, MD and his father, ophthalmologist Kaspar Pischel. Dr. Dohrmann Pischel was a former Department of Ophthalmology Chairman at Pacific Medical Center and a pioneer in the area of retinal detachments. The Pischel Library came under the Health Science administrative operation in the early 1970s.

Thanks to the generosity of the Eldorado Foundation, founded by members of the Pischel family, the Pischel Library's physical space was renovated in 1990s.

Dohrmann Kaspar Pischel MD,
1895-1988

Dr. Pischel was born in San Francisco in 1895. His father, Kaspar M. Pischel, was an Austrian ophthalmologist who emigrated to the United States in 1888. Dr. Dohrmann Pischel graduated from Stanford Medical School in 1923. He practiced ophthalmology in San Francisco where he focused on the treatment of retinal detachment. He was the pioneer of the modern surgery in ophthalmology on the West Coast.