One of those heart warming stories...
Source 20,000 babies later, doctor throws in the diaper
Bernard Ludwig, 86, leaves happy moms and an unmatched record
Barbara Turnbull
LIVING REPORTER
He brought 20,000 lives into the world. And, basically, gave up much of his own life to do so.
Available literally around the clock, Dr. Bernard Ludwig slept countless nights in a room at Mount Sinai Hospital, to be near his expectant patients. He took no vacations, even choosing to forgo his Peterborough-area cottage for one 10-year stretch.
Now 86, Ludwig recently hung up his stethoscope, leaving a record as Toronto's most prolific obstetrician-gynecologist. And he quit only because he broke a hip.
"Even in those days, when doctors tended to be much more on call than now, he was the exception," recalls former patient Linda Goldberg, who started seeing Ludwig as a teenager, then had him deliver her six children. "He would be available 24/7 and I really mean that."
Ludwig chose obstetrics by default, because it was the only specialty not spoken for when he was looking for a residency. Then he studied obstetrics at Washington's American University and did more graduate work in Miami.
In the throes of World War II, it was difficult for Jewish physicians to get on staff at teaching hospitals in Toronto. Ludwig called in a favour from a friend in Washington, who called the head of obstetrics and gynecology at Toronto General.
Suddenly, he had privileges at six hospitals in the city.
When he began his obstetrical practice in 1950, Mount Sinai was a small house on Yorkville Ave. and the delivery area was one room, divided in two.
"There were two people delivering at once sometimes, everybody yelling at the same time," Ludwig says. "Then they'd have to move them somewhere in the hall. It was a mess."
His practice quickly filled with Toronto's Jews – including high-profile families like the Kofflers and the Reichmanns – but his reputation soon had women flocking from all corners of the city.
When Mount Sinai started building a hospital at Elm and University, Ludwig met his future wife, who was there doing interior decorating through her job at Eaton's. The couple has four children and 13 grandchildren.
Margaret Ludwig had to get used to her husband's hours. Now an accomplished artist in the city, she says she developed her own interests and travelled when the kids were older.
In those years, specialists weren't available overnight, so Ludwig would bring his own anesthetist for those middle-of-the-night births. "Some nights we might have three or four deliveries; some weekends 15, 20," he recalls.
His constant availability explains his inordinately high number of deliveries. He regularly rescued general practitioners with their complicated deliveries, simply because he was around so much.
"If I slept there, they just woke me up and I delivered the baby. I had a skipping rope and running shoes at the hospital, so I would skip rope, have breakfast and go to the operating room to do hysterectomies. This went on for years and years," he says. "It was a screwy ride."
He'd often dash from one hospital to the other – literally, donning his sneakers and running.
From the patient's point of view, it was gruelling, too. Routine appointments had long waits, Goldberg recalls, particularly when Ludwig would run out to deliver a baby, then return.
"At times it was frustrating, but then you knew if it was you ... that he would be there for you."
And appointments were never rushed, she adds. "He gave you so much time. He was a big schmoozer."
Ludwig was a warm father figure, Goldberg says. Even when she was an adult, she recalls, his advice was always couched in the phrase, "If you were my daughter ... ."
Why wouldn't the doctor take a night or weekend off? "I had an attitude that if I don't deliver the baby, the patient will be upset," he says with a shrug. "I wanted to deliver everyone I'd taken on."
When he did go to the cottage, he'd drive to the city whenever a call came in, even in the middle of the night. Sometimes, despite his hour-long commute from Peterborough, he even beat the patient to the hospital.
Sundays were reserved for calling patients with lab results.
At 72, Ludwig stopped delivering babies but maintained a general gynecology practice. Then he became a general practitioner, building a family practice that included many immigrants.
Those patients who lacked health coverage, he'd see without charging.
If they couldn't afford prescription medications, the pharmacy close to his office had a standing order to put the cost on his tab.
These days, Ludwig is enjoying retirement, but every day he fields calls from doctors and former patients seeking advice. He can't sign referrals or prescriptions, but his opinion still matters.
He is circumspect about his unparalleled career. "That's the story and the ending isn't so serious," he says. "I'm still alive."
Toronto Star
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