Crusader

Crusty old Louis Ernst Schmidt likes his reputation as a terrible-tempered man. But this week, portly, pink-cheeked Dr. Schmidt was basking in a Sabbathlike calm. It was the physician's 80th birthday, and a delegation of colleagues turned up, first to give him a reception at Northwestern's medical school library and then a banquet at Chicago's Drake Hotel.

"I hope this brings in some cigars," Dr. Schmidt cracked. "I'm down to my last thousand." As one of the nation's leading urologists and one of its most effective crusaders against venereal diseases, Dr. Schmidt would get both his cigars and the unstinted praises of his associates.

Member Out. The son of a Union Army surgeon, Louis Schmidt got his M.D. at Northwestern University. He hung up his shingle in Chicago 51 years ago. His medical practice grew quickly, eventually became one of Chicago's largest. The growth was helped somewhat in later years by his souped-up Lincoln which got him to out-of-town calls at a spectacular clip. He hired as chauffeur a former policeman who had driven in the Indianapolis speedway races. Says Schmidt: "I don't believe in doctors driving cars. I don't believe in women driving cars, either--although the present Mrs. Schmidt [his second wife] is a good driver."

Soon after he joined Northwestern's medical school faculty in 1898, he set up the first genitourinary clinic west of the Alleghenies. In those days, VD was a topic for medical people only, and seldom men tioned aloud. Schmidt bellowed loud demands that the medical profession get to work and make VD treatments available to low-income families. He set up a VD clinic which was soon treating more than 2,000 daily, for small fees or no fees at all.

To help keep the clinic going, he advertised, and that resulted in his being expelled in 1930 from the American Medical Association and the Chicago Medical Society, for "unethical" conduct. Organized medicine, Schmidt retorted, was fighting his plan for low-cost medical care. He was given a clean bill of professional health by half a dozen other medical societies, by Northwestern which kept him on the faculty, and by St. Luke's Hospital, where he was senior attending urologist. Today, he is generally credited with having fathered the laws for premarital and prenatal tests for syphilis.

At his clinic and in his office, Schmidt has trained a score of urologists, whom he calls his "boys." As a teacher, he was unmercifully stern. During one operation he rapped an assistant sharply across the knuckles with a surgical instrument. The assistant retaliated by swatting Schmidt right back. The old surgeon stared angrily at the "boy" for a moment and then muttered: "I didn't hit you that hard."

In his younger, stormier days, he could wither a strong man with his swearing. "He swore so much," recalls one student, "he had to hyphenate his words to get them all in." Rare was the Schmidt boy who was not roundly berated, fired and rehired every few days.

Hand In. Schmidt is still chugging away on an active schedule. Up at 6 a.m., he makes his hospital rounds, sees office patients, holds consultations until late in the day. Ten years ago he laid down his scalpel, but he still watches operations, and he likes to show that his hand is still tremor-free. He still smokes ten cigars a day, and snaps off his hearing aid when ever a physician friend needles him to cut down.

Schmidt's chief weapon, his thunderous voice, has been dulled by a recent operation; but however weak the flesh, his spirit is still willing to take on the A.M. A.

("Nothing but a labor union"). Last week he rasped: "I believe in doctors, even though some of them belong to the A.M.A."

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