Lakewoods Building has Illustrious History

Article published May 28, 2000
S.A. Hussain

A wonderful thing happened in South Toledo recently. Thanks to the foresight of the Lucas County commissioners, the beautiful red brick building on the corner of Arlington and South Detroit avenues was saved from the wrecking ball and reincarnated as an apartment building for low-income seniors. If old buildings could talk, this building would have a fascinating story to tell.

It was built in 1930 as the Lucas County Hospital to treat the poor and the indigent. Thirteen years later, when it was renamed Maumee Valley Hospital, it was one of the well-known teaching hospitals in Ohio.

I came to Maumee Valley, as the hospital was popularly called, in 1964 for training in general surgery. For four grueling but exciting years I learned the art and craft of surgery at the feet of some of the great surgeons of our town. The Maumee Valley experience guided me at every step in my career. Whether operating in rudimentary hospitals in Pakistan, treating a gunshot wound in the remote Hindu Kush Mountains, or treating an injured child on the Tibet Plateau, Maumee Valley always came to my rescue.

The hospital was run by a dedicated group of physicians who served as full-time directors of various clinical departments. There was the gregarious Fred Douglas, Jr., chief of surgery who literally ruled the hospital. The kind and gentle but highly competent Marian Rejent was the director of pediatrics, and Bob Tittle, a luminary of the Graduate Hospital of Philadelphia, headed the medicine department.

Physicians in private practice came to teach and conduct research. I worked with the famous neurosurgeon Max Schinitker, nationally known plastic surgeon John Kelleher, pioneer heart surgeons Morris Selman and Wallace (Mac) McAlpine, and surgeons extraordinare Ernst Sternfeld, Roland Gandy, and Gerald Stark. And also with Robert Navarre, the pioneer vascular surgeon.

These men and many others accepted no remuneration for their time. Any money that was realized from patient care was donated to the research fund. Those funds supported myriad research activities that included an animal lab on the campus.

In the lab, innovative surgical techniques were tried and perfected, and different methods to treat burns, leg swellings, liver diseases, and shock were investigated. It was at Maumee Valley that the area's first hyperbaric chamber was installed to treat bends, carbon monoxide poisoning, gas gangrene, and severe infections.

Among many other firsts, it was the first local hospital to start kidney dialysis. Much of the research work done at Maumee Valley was presented at national and regional scientific meetings and published in leading medical journals. Some of the graduates of Maumee Valley went on to distinguish themselves on the national and international scene. Dr. Teruo Matsumoto became chairman of surgery at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Saeed Zafar a senior endocrinologist at Henry Ford Hospital, is recognized as an authority on the thyroid gland. Dr. Amira Gohara, a pathologist, became the dean of the School of Medicine at the Medical College of Ohio. There were many others as well.

When the Medical College of Ohio took its start at Maumee Valley Hospital in 1964, the hospital was renamed the Medical College Hospital. The building was vacated in 1980 when the college moved to its present campus on Arlington Avenue.

That enchanting place was also dear to me for another reason. It was there that I caught sight of a beautiful young student nurse who was to become my wife. Though it was a match made in hospital wards, it turned out to be as good as one made in heaven.

Dr. S. Amjad Hussain is a Toledo surgeon whose column appears every other week in The Blade. His e-mail address is aghaji@toledolink.com.

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