Gastroenterologist helped transform city into center of medical research

Richard Lawrence Wechsler, who died at age 93 on Jan. 13, helped transform Pittsburgh into a nationally renowned center of medical research. He was also a widely beloved local gastroenterologist -— although he did once risk upsetting his children’s digestion for the sake of health awareness.

“One of my strongest memories is when he came home and put two lungs on the dining room table. One was fleshy and red, and the other shriveled and black,” recalls filmmaker Carl Kurlander, whose mother was married to Dr. Wechsler for two years after his first wife’s death.

“I don’t know where he found them,” said Mr. Kurlander, who maintained a relationship with Dr. Wechsler long after his mother’s divorce. “But his point was, ‘This is a smoker’s lung.’ And none of the kids ever took up smoking.”

Born the son of a Squirrel Hill doctor, Dr. Wechsler studied at Harvard and the University of Pittsburgh. Just after finishing medical school, Mr. Kurlander recalled, Dr. Wechsler’s father introduced him to Jonas Salk, who later developed the polio vaccine. But Dr. Wechsler turned down a chance to work with Dr. Salk, Mr. Kurlander said, “because he didn’t think the research was going anywhere.”

Dr. Wechsler was more prescient about another Pittsburgh medical legend: pioneering transplant surgeon Dr. Thomas Starzl, who arrived in Pittsburgh in 1981. A medical journal that Dr. Wechsler edited, the American Journal of Digestive Diseases, published some of Dr. Starzl’s early research at a time when organ transplants were highly controversial.

“He was a very important guy,” Dr. Starzl said. “If you knew him and he trusted you, you had an outlet. And the publication of that work helped the authors.”

Dr. Starzl’s research helped establish Pittsburgh’s national reputation as a health care juggernaut. Dr. Wechsler’s son, Lawrence, called his father “one of the leaders in expanding our horizons here in Pittsburgh.”

Dr. Wechsler was a pioneer in his own right, his son said. He was, for example, the first local doctor to perform endoscopies, and was an early adopter of performing regular cancer screenings.

Lawrence Wechsler himself chairs the Neurology Department at the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of Health Sciences. He said his father inspired his medical career “by example. He always took his children on his hospital rounds. He loved to take us with him, because he was proud of what he did, and because that was a way to spend time with us.”

Dr. Wechsler’s own dietary habits, his son recalled, included “a typical breakfast of a bologna sandwich and Tab [diet soda] every morning. He was so busy, I don’t know how much time he had to eat the rest of the day.”

His patients included some of the city’s leading personages, though his highest-profile patient may have been world-famous cellist Pablo Casals, who took ill during a tour stop in Pittsburgh. And his son recalled that when the family went to dinner at the Concordia Club, “It would take about an hour to get from the door to our table because everyone knew him.”

Dr. Wechsler’s civic contributions also included serving a stint as a team doctor for the Pittsburgh Pirates, although his son recalled that “he couldn’t stand sports. He was totally bored by baseball.”

Mr. Kurlander recalled a story in which an ailing player asked Dr. Wechsler if he could pitch. “How do I know?” Dr. Wechsler replied. “I’m a gastroenterologist.”

Services for Dr. Wechsler were held earlier this week. In addition to Lawrence Wechsler, he is survived by Ellen I. Wechsler of Pittsburgh and Richard W. Wechsler. of Bridgeville. Other survivors include three grandchildren and a great-grandchild.