Dr. Donald W. Seldin, a charter
member of the Dallas Medical Hall of Fame and chairman
of the UT Southwestern Department of Internal Medicine
for many years, calls Dr. Spence “a towering
figure,” referring to his standing and reputation
in the annals of Dallas medicine. Spence played a
leading role in the founding and development of urology
in Texas.
Born in San Angelo in 1905 and later moving to Forth
Worth with his family, he attended the University
of Illinois and then graduated cum laude from Harvard
Medical School. After serving a residency in urology
at Massachusetts General Hospital, he returned to
Texas by way of a stopover in Ponca City, Oklahoma,
and in 1936, he joined a urology practice at the Dallas
Medical and Surgical Clinic. He served in the Navy
during World War II, seeing action in the South Pacific.
When he returned to Dallas, he was instrumental in
organizing the Society of Pediatric Urology for the
purpose of blending the expertise of the overworked
older specialists who had remained on the home front
with the energetic but inexperienced contingent of
specialists returning from the war.
Spence, who had taught at Baylor College of Medicine
before it moved to Houston during the war, joined
the urology department of UT Southwestern Medical
School in 1946. In the 1950s, he was appointed the
first chairman of the division of urology, where he
developed one of the nation’s best balanced
programs of clinical training and research. Dr. John
McConnell, himself later chairman of urology at UT
Southwestern, remembers Spence as both a stern taskmaster
and a nurturing mentor who became world-renowned for
his expertise in the development and presentation
of educational conferences. His approach, which included
putting physicians on the spot in front of their colleagues,
became known as the “Spence technique.”
McConnell says that Spence was also one of the founding
fathers of the field of pediatric urology and that
several operational procedures that he developed are
still referred to as the “Spence procedure.”
All this time, Spence continued his full-time practice
at Dallas Medical and Surgical Clinic, also serving
a five-year stint as chief of urology at Baylor University
Medical Center. He regularly would be seen making
the rounds at Parkland Hospital at 4:30 in the morning
before going to work for the day. He retired in 1985
at the age of 80 and died in 1994.
Excerpted from D Magazine
Best Doctors Issue 2006 as part of Dr. Spence’s
induction into the Dallas Medical Hall of Fame.
