Ludwig A. Michael, MD, is quick to mention that both he and the Dallas Medical Journal are celebrating their 85th birthdays in 2004. It’s a fitting coincidence because Dr Michael has been involved with the DMJ for 37 years. He joined the Editorial Committee in 1967 and was asked to be its chair in 1970. When he resigned from the chairmanship in 1994, he agreed to remain as a member and he continues to bring insight and wisdom to the committee.
“Speaking with Dr Michael on the phone, you’d never guess he’s 85,” says Valerie Hotchkiss, PhD, director of the Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. “The tone and timbre of his voice is youthful. It reflects his mind and outlook, his energy and enthusiasm. He has such broad interests; he’s a real Renaissance man.”

Some volumes of Dr Michael’s own collection, including first editions of Mark Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, recently were featured in the “Dallas Collects” exhibition at Bridwell.

Dr Hotchkiss met Dr Michael a few years ago when he was helping arrange for Bridwell to become the repository of part of the book collection of Lyle M. Sellers, MD, with whom Dr Michael practiced until 1963.

“Ours is a clinical library for medicine and dentistry,” says Cindy Scroggins, the director of the Baylor Health Sciences Library at Baylor University Medical Center, to which the collection was given. “Besides medical texts, the Ruth and Lyle Sellers Collection includes some rare and very valuable volumes. Over time and through Dr Michael’s dedicated efforts, Baylor’s administration saw the teaching value of the collection and agreed to place almost 100 titles on long-term deposit at Bridwell, making them more available to researchers.

“But when I think of Dr Michael,” Ms Scroggins continues, “it’s about his telling me jokes. He always cheers me up, no matter what. He’s charming. Plus, he’s my otolaryngologist, an excellent physician.”

A native of New York, Dr Michael graduated from NYU College of Medicine and then says he “went farther west than anyone else” in his class to an internship at St Louis City Hospital. During internship, he was influenced by Frank Sooy, MD (later head of otolaryngology and chancellor at the University of California San Francisco) and became interested in otolaryngology as a specialty. He did a residency at Barnes Hospital in St Louis and then, while serving in the US Army in Chickasha, Okla, and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, worked with soldiers who had hearing losses.

But perhaps, Dr Michael muses, his choice of otolaryngology as a specialty was influenced even earlier. “When I was just 6 or 7,” he recalls, “a young neighbor boy had his tonsils removed and bled to death after coming home. Maybe unconsciously that was still affecting me, and when I started out, tonsillectomy was the No. 1 operation in children.”
Dr Michael joined Dr Sellers in practice at the Medical Arts Building in Dallas in 1948. Dr Michael was the first Dallas member of the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery and in 1955 was the first in Dallas to perform a stapes mobilization operation on the ear. In the 1970s he saw the use of ear tubes peak in popularity. But the most significant changes, he says, came with technology. “The visualization achieved by new microscopes and new instruments is revolutionary,” he says. When he was starting out, simply having penicillin to treat infections was a big improvement.
Audiology has been Dr Michael’s emphasis over the years. During his first 15 years in Dallas, he was the area consultant in audiology for the Veterans Administration. He was on the Home Study Course faculty for audiology for the American Academy of Otolaryngology and served on the advisory board of the National Institutes of Health, Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Since 1963, in addition to teaching and his private practice, Dr Michael’s great devotion has been to the Callier Center for Communication Disorders, which affiliated with the University of Texas at Dallas in 1975.

“Ludwig was one of the key people in the beginning,” says Ross Roeser, PhD, who has been with Callier for 34 years and is its director. “He’s always been extremely generous with his time to help with the programs of Callier. His dedication and work with children with deafness have made an unsurpassable difference. And he’s a pleasure to work with—always has a quip, or quote or something to make you laugh.”

Dr Michael met Carmen Miller, PhD, when both were on the faculty at UT Southwestern. He was a clinical instructor of otolaryngology and she was a psychology instructor in the Department of Psychiatry. They were married in 1956. Dr Michael jokes that his wife stayed one step ahead of him on the promotion ladder at the school until recently, when he became professor emeritus in 2002, a year before she did. She shares her husband’s devotion to community service. She founded the Dallas Epilepsy Association, was a founder and first president of the Dallas Mental Health Association, and was president of several United Way agencies, including the Child Care Group and the Visiting Nurse Association.

The Michaels’ son, Andrew, is an ophthalmologist in Richmond, Va, where he lives with his wife, Pat, and sons Ben and Will. When the Michaels’ daughter, Susan, was about a year old, she contracted viral encephalitis, resulting in neurological problems; she lives in a supervised group home in Dallas.

Recently Dr Michael wrote a history of ENT for Baylor University Medical Center’s 100th anniversary and he lectures occasionally, “more historical than clinical now,” he says. He likes to pop in for monthly rounds at the medical school and he reads avidly. He wants to make another trip to London to do some research—and book-hunting, no doubt. He isn’t slowing down much—he still sees patients on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings.

“I’ve thought about retiring,” says Dr Michael, “but some of my patients won’t let me!”

Tribute to Dr Ludwig Michael: an auspicious anniversary
By Linda C. Chandler, free-lance writer and former DMJ editor