Gustav Carl Erich Weber was born in Bonn, Germany. His father, Moritz Ignaz Weber, was an anatomist from the University of Landshut who had been called to the chair of anatomy at Bonn; his mother, a von Podowilz, is reported to have had literary attainments. The boy grew up in a home which was frequented by such intellectual leaders of the day as Jean Paul Richter.
While studying at the University of Bonn, young Weber came under the suspicion of having been implicated in the revolution of 1848. He transferred his studies to Munich and spent sometime with an uncle, an ophthalmologist. He graduated in 1851 from Beaumont Medical College, St. Louis.
He shortly emigrated to America and went to St. Louis, Mo. , where in 1849 he continued his medical studies, interesting himself in particular in original anatomical research. He returned to the medical centers of Europe, where his father's reputation opened to him the doors of great clinics and classical teachers. He came to the Vienna of Joseph Skoda, Joseph Hyrtl, Ferdinand Hebra, Karl Rokitansky, and Karl Braun, and continued his studies under the tutelage of the latter. From there he went to Amsterdam and thence to Paris to the clinic of Philibert-Joseph Roux. Apparently the events following the revolution induced Weber to return to America in 1853. He assumed the position of surgeon at a hospital in New York, which had been left vacant by the death of his brother, Edward Weber, but in 1856, his health having also failed, he left for the West. From 1856 to 1863 he held the chair of surgery in the medical department of Western Reserve College, commonly known as Cleveland Medical College. Under his régime the surgical clinic became very popular, and his reputation grew apace. He was appointed surgeon general of Ohio in 1862 and after his resignation served as surgeon of the 129th Ohio Volunteer Infantry until Nov. 1, 1863. In 1864 he organized the staff of the new St. Vincent Charity Hospital, Cleveland, and in the same year the Charity Hospital Medical College, where he was dean and professor of surgery (1864 - 70). From 1870 to 1881 he was professor of clinical surgery and dean of the medical department of Wooster University (later the College of Wooster), and in 1881 became the dean of a new school, the medical department of Western Reserve University, which was the result of the fusion of most of the faculty of Wooster with that of the medical department of Western Reserve College. In 1894 he returned to the medical department of Wooster University and remained there until 1896. Toward the end of the century he gradually retired from active academic and professional duties. He was appointed American consul at Nürnberg in 1897 by President McKinley and held the position until 1902. On his return to Cleveland in 1903 he suffered an attack of apoplexy which forced him to spend his later years in his country cottage at Willoughby, Ohio, where he died in 1912.
A general practitioner and surgeon whose field was the entire human body, Weber had acquired a training remarkable for its extent and intensity. In the practice of surgery, which was his passion, he developed both great skill and a deservedly high repute. In his lectures he apparently emphasized general principles rather than factual elements, in the manner of the classical European teachers. His style, as far as one can judge from the few articles he published, was elegant and flowing. He was one of the founders and editors of the Cleveland Medical Gazette, which first appeared in 1859. His publications include Address Introductory to the Opening of the Cleveland Medical College Session, 1856-57 (1856) and "A New Method of Arresting Hemorrhage" (Medical Record, N. Y. , Apr. 24, 1875).
He married Ruth Elizabeth Cheney of New York City in 1854, and had by her two children, a son and a daughter.
