Class Ambassadors play an important role in keeping Jefferson connected to our alumni community. Each Class Ambassador brings unique experiences and accomplishments to the table, and this series helps us share those stories. In this spotlight, we're highlighting Dr. Richard Wenzel, Class Ambassador for the Class of 1965.
Dr. Wenzel is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of infectious diseases. Over the course of his career, he has authored more than 550 scientific publications and edited six major textbooks that have shaped medical education and practice worldwide. His research and leadership have influenced health policy, guided global responses to infectious threats, and trained new generations of clinicians.
Beyond his achievements in medicine, Dr. Wenzel has also distinguished himself as a published author. His works Labyrinth of Terror, Dreams of Troy, and The Writer in Tuscany combine medical insight with rich prose, exploring ethical dilemmas, and the human side of science. Through both scholarship and fiction, Dr. Wenzel demonstrates the rare ability to merge scientific precision with the emotional depth of storytelling.
Class Ambassador Spotlight: Richard P. Wenzel, MD ’65
In Conversation with Dr. Richard Wenzel
Recently, Dr. Wenzel sat down with Mosaic Digest for an in-depth interview. The interview touched on his perspectives as a physician, a researcher, and an author.
You've served in leadership roles across international health organizations and major hospitals. Looking back, what moment or achievement stands out to you as the most defining highlight of your medical career?
"I've received many prestigious awards for teaching, research, and leadership in Medicine. I'm honored by each. But none compared to the special joy I've had in shaping the careers of medical students, residents in Internal Medicine, and fellows in Infectious Diseases. By careful and complete physical examinations, my key focus has been at the bedside where the trainees see and hear me in conversations with patients and their families. By careful and complete physical examinations, I seek to pass on the mastery of those skills. They watch me summarize my thoughts for the patients, who can ask me questions. I endeavor to emphasize a reverence for our profession and its high purpose as they later reflect on their careers. Interacting with trainees has been a special honor. Many stay in touch and later become friends."
Your career has taken you from hospitals and lecture halls to the world of storytelling. What inspired you to make the leap from academic writing to fiction, and how has that shift influenced your perspective on medicine and humanity?
"In Medicine and Science, we often deal with statistics, an abstract look at groups in general. On the ward and in the clinic, patients are too often identified by their illnesses — the 80-year-old woman with recent coronary artery bypass surgery. But the person herself is too often unknown or referred to with some technology — the 70-year-old lady with a recent pacemaker placement.
"Fiction and poetry help us know the individual with her specific narrative and unique responses to illness. Whether I'm teaching medical students or a lay audience, I can bring them closer to my ideas and introduce them to my patients with references to the arts, including novels and poetry, even visual arts...
"The question we need to ask: Who is the unique person with the medical problem? I conclude that all physicians should read novels, perhaps listen out loud to poetry, to prepare to know their patients."
Having published over 500 scientific papers and multiple books, including your recent novels, how do you approach writing differently when addressing the medical community versus a broader audience of fiction readers?
"In addressing both the medical community and public, I found I have more influence if I refer to the truth of poets, playwrights, even visual artists to give my audience new insights to a problem, new clarity in phrasing it, and an emotional experience to gain interest in a topic. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, with all the uncertainties, I had to explain the detailed approach to the testing of new vaccines and drugs: the hypothesis, current assumptions, the reason for a randomized trial, the initial results, and later corroboration of the experiments. All important in a rigorous attempt to know the scientific method. But I could top it off with a quote from playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose protagonist in the play The Life of Galileo, says briefly, the goal of science is not to open doors to everlasting wisdom, but to close the doors to everlasting ignorance."
Connections to Jefferson
Service and Connection
Your role as a Class Ambassador connects you closely with your classmates and Jefferson. What first motivated you to take on this responsibility, and what has kept you engaged over time?
"One of our classmates and a friend, Earl Fleegler, in our senior year suggested that he and I share the responsibility as Class Ambassadors. He later asked me to take it on by myself. Once into the job, I realized I enjoyed the idea of keeping up with classmates, at first during the two-year time after graduation, when most of us were called up for military duty during the Vietnam conflict and afterwards when we began our subspecialty training and careers. I enjoy writing, and throughout the years, Jeff let me compose my class notes as I wanted. I've enjoyed the connections we've built."
Class Ambassadors often serve as a bridge between alumni and the university. How do you approach that role, and what do you find most rewarding about it?
"The intensity of our experience as medical students forged a strong bond for us during and after our training. The stories we shared became lasting memories, and whenever we meet, we pick up where we left off, despite the interval that separated us. That's a special relationship."
Jefferson has evolved in many ways since your time as a student. How do you feel your own Jefferson experience shaped your path, personally or professionally?
"I fell in love with Microbiology during our second year at Jeff, finding excitement in the stories of our professors whose global travels to remote lands made a difference to the health of populations.
"At the end of the third year at Jeff, Chairman KG Goodner invited Bill Wood and me to spend three months in Taipei working with specialists at a Naval Research Laboratory there... Two days after our arrival, however, we boarded a plane for Manila with a team of Navy medics to treat hundreds of patients at the large San Lazaro hospital during a new epidemic of cholera. Lives were saved with IV therapy, and the public health impact of our team's skills was obvious. I was introduced to global health.
"In my senior year, KG introduced me to Ted Woodward, a friend of his and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland. Woodward was an iconic, infectious diseases specialist. Knowing my interest in global travel, Woodward invited me to join the residency, promising to send me to what is today Bangladesh for three months to help lead a team treating cholera, an annual epidemic there. Arriving in Dhaka, I also made rounds at the Smallpox Hospital there and appreciated the clinical impact of that now eliminated pathogen. After a few weeks, I volunteered to travel to remote villages near the Burmese border, with people ill with cholera. My career in Infectious Diseases was shaped at Jeff, and I kept up with Goodner and Woodward for years afterwards."
If you could share one message with your fellow alumni about staying engaged with Jefferson, what would it be?
"Alumni are like a large family, with many memories that bind us together. Our classmates very much enjoy catching up with each other. A key to stay engaged is to ask the alumni to send periodic professional and family updates, perhaps some weighing in on the state of health care. The Class Notes are very popular, and we look forward to reading each one."