p h i l a m e d s o c .org
FEATURE
Meet Dr. Ricardo Morgenstern A NEW PRESIDENT WITH A BREADTH OF LIFE EXPERIENCE By Karen L. Chandler
A
s its new president, Dr. Ricardo Morgenstern, MD, FRCPE, FACG, FCPP, brings to the Philadelphia County Medical Society a rich tapestry of life experiences interwoven with an understanding of other cultures and an appreciation of the history of medicine.
Currently serving as the Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center, he was board-certified in gastroenterology in 1984. Morgenstern is a native of Bolivia. When Morgenstern was born in 1952 in Oruro, Bolivia, he began his life in an important South American city at that time, well-known for its tin mines, a product crucial during World War II. “Bolivia was the largest producer of tin in the world. It is the largest producer of many things, and it is the poorest country in South America,” Morgenstern said.
In Bolivia, Morgenstern’s father married his mother, a native of Uruguay. A move with his mother to Uruguay by age five meant that Morgenstern entered a school system with a focus on careers. “I liked medicine and philosophy, but I wanted something productive; both are useful; philosophy is supra-useful, as it serves as a base for every advancement in life but is not productive” he said. “In Uruguay the system was of six years of high school and the last two years you selected what you’re going to do. I was very interested in medicine and science.” After completing high school and a year of volunteerism in Israel, Morgenstern returned to Bolivia and started medical school at the University of San Simon in Cochabamba. He describes a cruel dictatorship in power at that time with a multitude of arrests that frequently reduced school availability to only one semester a year due to government closures.
“The medical school was good, and you had opportunities. The son of a holocaust survivor, Morgenstern tells of his There are very good physicians all over the world from Bolivia,” father’s arrest by the Gestapo from his upholstery shop when Morgenstern said. he lived in Warsaw, his imprisonment in a forced labor camp, The differences between the U.S. and European and Latin and his eventual escape. American school systems are striking to Morgenstern who Morgenstern’s father was hidden away behind a false notes that in the other countries students finish high school wall from 1942 to 1944 until he moved his family to Bolivia, and head into medicine, as opposed to American students one of the few countries in the world willing to accept Jews who enter other fields of study prior to medical school. desperately trying to escape Europe. 4
Philadelphia Medicine : Summer 2022
