He graduated from Marshall High School in Chicago's West Side and proceeded to obtain bachelor's and medical degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
[1] As a young intern at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., immediately after World War II, Kavka treated poet Ezra Pound.
Pound was "vigorously and viciously anti-Semitic" and "quite crazy, but Jerry, who was Jewish, managed still to talk to him," said colleague and student Arnold Goldberg of him later.
[1] Kavka's observations, made over a four-month period, ultimately led to a successful insanity plea by Pound, something that helped the poet avoid a possible death sentence for treason.
[3] Kavka's internship was cut short when he was drafted as a physician into the United States Army Medical Corps and became a lieutenant.