Adolf Irtl studied medicine and after being awarded a doctorate in medicine and surgery in 1892 opened a medical practice at Alser Straße 16 in Vienna's 9th district. In 1904 he married Alice, née Pellar, a former soloist at the Hofoperntheater in Vienna. In 1905 he was made Hoftheaterarzt (court theatre physician) at the k. k. Hofburgtheater (from 1918 Burgtheater), where he had already worked since 1901 and was to continue until 1937. Until the end of the First World War, where he served as an army doctor, he was also Hofarzt (court physician) to the future Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma and in 1919 joined the Staatsamt für soziale Verwaltung (State Social Administration Office) (from 1920 Federal Ministry of Social Administration), which he left in 1923 with the grade of Regierungsrat. Between the wars, he held various positions in professional associations and lobbies, for example in the Wiener Ärztekammer and the Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien (GdÄW). He had joined the latter in 1906 and in 1923 became its asset administrator, and he was a member of the administrative board until the annexation in March 1938. He was also involved from 1904 in the antisemitic Verein deutscher Ärzte and from 1908 in the antisemitic and German Nationalist Deutscher Klub founded by the Pan-German League. The political assessment for the NSDAP Gau personnel office in April 1940 said of him: "As early as 1919 he supported the nationalist idea and gave voice to his antisemitism. " He applied to join the NSDAP in 1 March 1938 and after the annexation sought to join the local NSDAP section Wien-Stadtpark and became a member of the NS-Ärztebund. After the medical historian Isidor Fischer had been expelled in March 1938 on account of his Jewish origins, Irtl took over his function as librarian and head of the Bibliothek der GdÄW. In the following months, he wrote to former members of the GdÄW who had been expelled on racial grounds demanding payment of their subscriptions. In March 1938 the Gau chairman of the National Socialist Ärztebund for Vienna appointed him asset administrator, and through the Stillhaltekommissar (liquidation commissar) he became temporary director of the GdÄW. Until October 1938, Irtl applied to the dean of the Medical Faculty, the representative of the Reichsärzteführer Rudolf Ramm, the head of the Gau health department and the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs with a view to securing the contents of the GdÄW library and the continued existence of the GdÄW, and also sought to re-establish the society on National Socialist principles. On 17 May 1938 the GdÄW was integrated in the Wiener medizinische Doctoren-Kollegium and on 16 December 1938 made answerable to the Reichsärztekammer Munich and its assets taken over by that body. From 1939 only the newly established Wiener medizinische Gesellschaft existed as the successor to the GdÄW and the other disbanded medical associations. The Wiener medizinische Bibliothek – Billrothhaus was attached to this new organization and headed by Irtl until April 1945. Between 1941 and 1943 Irtl published the "Jahresbericht [annual report] über die Wiener Medizinische Bibliothek Billrothaus" in the Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, in which he documented the additions to the library in the form of purchases, gifts or the exchange of duplicates, including the acquisitions donated by Alfons Rosse, head of the Vienna Gestapo press office. After the liberation of Austria, Irtl was suspended from his functions in the GdÄW on account of his NSDAP membership. He died on 27 May 1947 in Vienna.