Hiram M. Hiller, Jr.

Hiram Milliken Hiller, Jr. (March 8, 1867 – August 8, 1921), was an American physician, medical missionary, explorer, and ethnographer. He traveled in Oceania and in South, Southeast, and East Asia, returning with archeological, cultural, zoological, and botanical specimens and data for museums, lectures and publications. His notes and collections provide valuable information about those regions and their people from the late 19th century. In later life, he was involved in the study of polio during the epidemics that hit the United States in the early 20th century.

He was born on March 8, 1867, near Kahoka, Missouri, to Colonel Hiram Milliken Hiller, Sr. (1834–1895) and the former Sarah Fulton Bell (1837–1915), who were both from Pennsylvania. He was the third of their six children who survived to adulthood. The elder Hiller, a Civil War veteran and lawyer, was a prominent citizen of Clark County, Missouri, and was instrumental in the success of Kahoka until his death in a railroad accident. His house in Kahoka is a registered historic landmark.

The younger Hiller attended Parsons College in Iowa, earning his B.S. in 1887. He moved to Philadelphia to attend medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he met several other men of similar interests, including William Henry Furness III (1867–1920, the son of Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness and nephew of architect Frank Furness), and Alfred Craven Harrison, Jr. (1869–1925, nephew of Charles Custis Harrison, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania from 1894 to 1911). Hiller graduated in 1891 and served his residency at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and at nearby Blockley Hospital. He traveled in Europe (1893–1894) and spent time in Boston, where he earned money for later adventures while studying at Harvard.Edward S. Morse, a Harvard zoologist, was giving lectures about Japan, then a subject of great fascination in the West, throughout Boston; Hiller appears to have been inspired by these.

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