Prescription for life: Dr. John Dorsey, 90, looks back on 60 years in medicine

His career in medicine began when doctors still made house calls, before the advent of the measles vaccine and the pacemaker, and when polio epidemics maimed and killed by the thousands.

In his six decades in medicine, Dr. John M. Dorsey Jr. has seen almost everything. He's delivered babies, performed spinal taps and blood transfusions and met patients at his office in Bingham Farms after hours to stitch up gashes and dole out prescriptions and advice. 

Dr. Dorsey, who turned 90 on Saturday, is still at it — though he's dropped the house calls.

For three months during his medical training, he recalls overseeing massive steel cylinders called iron lungs as they pushed and pulled air out of the lungs of polio-ravaged children whose paralyzed bodies couldn't control even their breathing. 

"I was in charge of the iron lung ward," Dorsey said. "I had some 12 to 15 units at Herman Kiefer Hospital," which was just north of Henry Ford Hospital.

"The polio vaccine was being worked on, but the epidemics were very frightening, and they were epidemics. ... There are very few of me left in practice who really did see them the way that we used to see them. It was terrifying."

Dr. Dorsey estimates he's close to racking up 400,000 office visits in a long career that helped shaped health care for thousands of Michigan children. 

An early advocate for the need for infant car seat laws, he served on a General Motors advisory panel on car seat safety and was chairman of a national automotive safety committee. He founded a medical clinic in Pontiac, cofounded Common Ground Sanctuary and also served on the Birmingham City Commission.

Dorsey established a medical program for the children of migrant workers and won the pediatrician of the year award for 2009-2010 from the Michigan Academy of Pediatrics. 

Only about 10% of American doctors continue to work past age 70, according to the Federation of State Medical Boards, which does a biannual census of actively licensed physicians in the U.S. But the census doesn't differentiate age beyond the category of 70 and older, so it's difficult to say how many physicians continue working into their 90s.

The State of Michigan doesn't track medical licenses based on the age of doctors, according to a spokesman from the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

His long career in medicine, he said, makes him uniquely experienced. 

"I’ve seen so much over the years, but that doesn’t make me an expert," said Dorsey, who cofounded Beverly Hills Pediatrics in 1959. "It only makes me an expert by default because I’ve seen so much."

Though his schedule has dropped from four days a week in the office to three, he doesn't plan to retire. 

"Well, my friends who have retired who are still living have just kind of faded into oblivion, and I think that could happen to me very easily," he said. "I think people who wistfully retire and lose their licensing ... they wind up playing golf. I don't play golf." 

His career longevity, he says, often gives him the advantage of generational knowledge. 

"Some of my first patients are entering their 60s," he said. "Sometimes, I’ll get three generations of families instead of just two. 

"There's nothing more helpful than watching a family start, and sometimes they’ll come in with pediatric social issues or pediatric developmental issues so that when I see them for a conference, I’ve got mileage that nobody else can ever get because I’ve seen them, and their families and I could see things unfolding and unfolding and unfolding. 

"It’s a real quality of diagnosis just by length of exposure."

The Anagnos and Doria families can attest to that.

Maria Doria was an infant when her mother, Pat Anagnos, first took her to see Dorsey in the early 1970s. Now 45, all three of Doria's children — Anthony, 11, Adriana, 16, and Alexa, 18 — are his patients, too. 

And Maria Doria's brother, Bill Anagnos, 54, of Bloomfield Hills, credits Dr. Dorsey with changing the course of his life. 

"When I was 12, I fractured my spine," he said. "I wiped out on a little minibike. I went to an orthopedic surgeon who said to my mother, and I’m still amazed he said this in front of me, 'I hope your son is smart because he’s never going to be able to use his body for the rest of his life.' Not that I was paralyzed, but infirm. Suffice it to say, I was devastated. My mother said, 'Let’s go see Dr. Dorsey.' 

"He examined me and he said, 'You’re a young boy and you’re very healthy. I’m going to write you a prescription for a corset-style brace with stiff metal bars up the back. You wear that all day long, except at night. At night, you sleep on the floor. Come see me after eight weeks.'

 "At 8 weeks, they X-rayed me, and I was fine. I went on to move to California and be in the film business."

Anagnos did stunts in the 1989 movie "Tap" with Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr., "where one of the tricks I do is run up the side of a building and back flip off the wall. 

"I always thought of that. if I’d have listened to that orthopedic surgeon and not listened to Dr. Dorsey, I probably never would have pursued that avenue. So Dr. Dorsey had a lot to do with my pursuing a lot of the physical things I've done in my life. If not for him, I’d have just sat back and said forget it."

Anagnos's niece, Alexa Doria, also has been inspired by Dorsey. 

"I’m actually interested in pursuing medicine myself because of Dr. Dorsey," said Alexa, who plans to attend the University of Michigan in the fall. 

"I can only aspire to be half the doctor that he is. ... I have never been to a doctor who has both the bedside manner and the extensive knowledge in just about every area of medicine, and it’s amazing to see the generations of our family, and the fact that he’s still the same, wonderful doctor he is."

Dr. Dorsey's own interest in medicine came from his father, Dr. John M. Dorsey Sr., a noted psychiatrist and Wayne University professor who studied under Sigmund Freud, the renowned father of modern psychoanalysis. 

"Probably because I didn’t think I’d be good at anything else, I went into medicine," the second John M. Dorsey said. "It was the flavor in the house."

His parents took a young John and his brother, Edward, with them to Vienna, Austria, in 1935 so the senior John Dorsey could work with Freud. 

"My brother and I were just dropped out of the sky into school, and my teacher, Nuchi Plank, knew a little bit of English, and we knew no German. But when you’re 8, 9, 10  years old, you really absorb language well."

He remembers having the run of the town in those years leading up to World War II, riding the street cars, and enjoying the more country-like Grinzing, Austria, where Freud liked to spend his summers.  

"One day, we went over as a family, and I played ping-pong with Freud," he said. "I think I’m the only person still on earth that played ping-pong with Freud and knew him face-to-face."

"Right before we came back to the United States in 1937, my mom asked our Jewish friends, 'Don’t you think you should leave?' But they thought Hitler would blow over, which did not take place."

Soon after, the Nazis wrested power over Austria. Freud escaped to London, where he died in 1939 of cancer.

After the war, Dorsey heard from his former fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at the school he and his brother attended in Vienna. 

"She had escaped from Austria, and she told me that my brother and I were the only survivors from our grades," he said. "About half the students at our school were Jews. They all died. The other half wound up in the German Army, and I think they died in Russia. She told me this in 1946, that we were the only two survivors from the two years we were there."

That was a harsh reality to absorb. 

"I mean, we’re survivors, but we were privileged survivors," he said. "We came into Austria, and we came out. As Americans, it was not an issue. So we were not really survivors; it’s just that we were the only ones left out of the entire class roll."

With that realization, he said, "I went into pediatrics, which was very exciting, and I never looked back."

He contacted Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, who continued to work in psychoanalysis after her father's death. He asked whether he might study with her for a while to inform his work in pediatrics, but was rebuffed. 

So he turned his attention elsewhere, serving on the boards of Cranbrook Schools and Roeper School, working as a medical consultant for WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) and even penning an occasional guest column in the Free Press in the 1980s and 1990s. 

He enlisted in the Navy and served in the reserves from 1945-1950, and later reenlisted, rising to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. 

Dr. Anna Maria Oniciu, who has worked for 26 years alongside Dorsey at Beverly Hills Pediatrics, said he's been an incredible mentor for her. 

"It's his attitude toward life, his curiosity that is just unbelievable," she said. "He can read about airplanes, about Einstein, and then, he just talked to me last month about Coco Chanel. He’s interested in everything, and I think that’s why he’s so young."

Oniciu was a political refugee who worked in Romania as a pediatrician before coming to the U.S. Dorsey, she said, helped her get licensed to practice in Michigan. 

She recalled a day soon after she arrived in the U.S. when Dorsey took her to Beaumont to shadow him while he saw patients. 

"I spent a whole day seeing patients with him, and then he gets on his bike and goes home. I expected, coming from Romania, that he would drive a Cadillac. But he would ride home on his bike!" she said, laughing. 

"He never, ever took the elevator at Beaumont. He always was on the stairs. ... I always take the stairs, now, like him. It’s because of him.

"He has been just like a star in the sky, and all of us, we follow."

His brother, Dr. Edward Dorsey, a retired psychiatrist like their father, said he always was a leader. 

"Johnny is a phenomenon," he said. "He was right from the start, and he’s risen like cream in any organization — from high school president, to medical class president, and you probably know, he’s been elected chief of the medical staff at Beaumont Royal Oak as often as they can reelect him.

"He’s just an admirable person. He likes people, and people like him. ... I don’t know what’s going to stop him."

If you ask John Dorsey, not a thing. 

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.