104 SARASOTA SCENE | DECEMBER 2017
on the town
What did your neighborhood as child
sound like?
I lived in center city Philly on Pine Street
and had a trolley running across the
house, so we would always hear the trolley
car. It was a brownstone. My father
was a neuropsychologist and we lived
above his office. It was always interesting
and we could hear the sounds of the city.
What were the greatest lessons learned
from your parents?
Dad told me to do the best that I can
and always strive for the best, especially
being Jewish. You got to be the best that
you can ever be because you’re going
to be discriminated upon. In those days,
we had 10 percent of Jews who got into
medical school, so it was hard to get in
and you had to excel to get ahead. Mom
stressed the same things and was a homemaker
and actually worked as a secretary
for my father.
When did you first realize that you were
cut out to be a doctor? Was it a calling?
My father was neuropsychologist and so
he had patients at the city hospital. When
I was 10 years, he would take me on
rounds with him. I would see him seeing
all his patients, all these varied cases.
I didn’t know
that I wasn’t
supposed to
be anything but
a doctor. I thought this is what you do.
Follow your father around. Everybody
seemed to love him. It was interesting
because he arranged for me to have a
residency in neurosurgery. And he had
this all arranged when I was 10 years old.
He was a professor at Temple University.
As I grew up he told me that I was going
to be neurosurgeon because he was a
neurologist. He said neurosurgery is
great. You go into the brain and you can
help people. So that’s how I was set up to
being a neurosurgeon from the time I was
kid. My father was the biggest influence
on me becoming a doctor and he was
proud of me.
Tell me about those early days as doctor.
I went to Philadelphia General and was
given the neurosurgeon rotation the first
month as an intern. I was up all night
and the patients were dying so I got very
depressed with neurosurgery. I didn’t
think that it was a very good thing to do.
There wasn’t a lot of happiness in that
field so I decided not to go into it. I was
set up with residency and everything, but
I canceled, and I had to figure out what
I was going to do. I knew I was going to
be surgeon because I was good with my
hands and I built trains. I was looking
for something and it just so happened
that ear surgery was just in its infancy
in the late 1950s. The microscope that
allowed us to operate on the ear was
just invented and you could look in and
see the structures of the ear. It made the
ear look very large so you could operate
with your hands. This was a brandnew
field just starting at Temple, so I
got very excited. There was very little
research being done and the field was
just coming of age. I’ve
always been in research
and development from the
time I was a little kid. So,
I was bumping into guys
who were otolaryngologists
(ear, nose and throat) and
they told me what a great
field it was and that I should
go into this field because it
was new and needed a lot of
research. I was into that. It
all fit together and I was very
excited about getting into it. Then a
mentor of mine, Dr. Gene Meyers, persuaded
me to go to Harvard with him
and I became a part of that program for
eight years. I was on the staff and did
a lot of teaching, and that’s how I got
started. These were the pioneer days in
the field.
How much has recent technology
helped move your field light years ahead
in helping patients?
Technology with computers and such
did amazing things for all specialties,
especially cochlear implant. It
was allowed to expand because the
computer was able to code speech so
the person could actually understand
language.
When people ask you what you do,
what do you tell them?
I’ve been in research and development
and teaching and that’s why I started
the Ear Research Foundation in 1979,
to continue doing research, teaching
and education. I’ve been involved in