2015 DOCTORS’ BALL PHYSICIAN HONOREES
20
Dr. Morris Weiss
EPHRAIM MCDOWELL
PHYSICIAN OF THE YEAR
W
hen he was a student at Louisville Male High School in the late 1940’s
and early 1950’s, Morris Weiss had an after school job with his cardiologist father, Dr. Morris Weiss, Sr., developing the photographic
images captured by an early version of an electrocardiograph or EKG machine.
In a darkroom the younger Weiss had rigged in a basement bathroom at home
on Village Drive, the teenager pored over pictures of the electrical activity in
the hearts of his father’s patients. Weiss has been studying hearts ever since.
“I’ve lived through the entire history of modern cardiology,” Weiss says,
reflecting on his 54 years in practice. Now 82, Weiss still sees patients four
days a week, and quips, “I started out as an 18th century cardiologist.” Besides a
stethoscope and the medicines nitroglycerine, digitalis and quinidine, even in
the first half of the 20th century, cardiologists had none of the lifesaving treatment innovations that we now take for granted, like cardiac catheterization,
pacemakers, and transplantation.
Medical breakthroughs aside, Weiss has made it a point over the years to
take time with patients – a tried and true approach that he says pays off for the
doctor as well. “My satisfaction has been that I sat and listened to the history,” of
each patient, getting to know, “their problem, the social and economic situation
they might be in, their fear, their anxiety, and weave that all into one tapestry.”
These days, Weiss says, “It’s easy…to get caught up in the metrics of medicine,
and that’s not our job (as doctors).” Invoking Hippocrates, Weiss adds, “Our
job is to relieve pain, fear, anxiety and suffering.”
“He has this marvelous relationship with his patients,” says Dr. Gary Fuchs,
a partner in the cardiology practice Weiss took over after his father died in
1961. “He sits down with them. Patients believe, and I think it’s true, he has a
real interest in them and their problems.” Fuchs adds, “He thrives as much on
working with patients as the patients do,” on working with him.
Weiss’ longtime friend and neighbor, Louisville photographer Ted Wathen,
says Weiss’ interest in patients’ lives comes naturally. As a physician and as a
citizen, Weiss has been an outspoken advocate for social justice through organizations including the NAACP and International Physicians for the Prevention
of Nuclear War. Weiss met his wife, Terry, a Louisville family practice physician,
at a local Council on Peacemaking and Religion breakfast.
About 35 years ago, a JB Speed Art Museum lecture on Roman archeology
ignited Weiss’ ongoing passion for archeology, which has taken him around
the world. Weiss has also lectured and written extensively on the subject. “I
have never known Morrie to be within 50 kilometers of some famous or even
obscure pile of ancient rocks without him taking a side trip to take a look,”
says Dr. Peter Hasselbacher, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University
of Louisville.
All profiles written by:
Damian “Pat” Alagia, MD
Chief Physician Executive
and Chief Medical Officer,
KentuckyOne Health
LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
Weiss tells a true story that affected him deeply, about a patient of another
doctor who died after receiving an artificial heart. The patient’s widow demanded
that a piece of her deceased husband’s own damaged heart be retrieved from
a lab to be re-implanted and buried with his body. “I realized how insensitive
we had become as cardiologists,” Weiss says, “so involved with the technology
that we hadn’t examined the emotional, cultural impact of such an event.”
Inspired to read what great poets and others have written about the heart
over the millennia, Weiss plans to write yet another book, on the heart as a
symbol in western civilization – after 54 years in medicine, continuing to study
the human heart in every way.