Family Medicine Interest Group
Simon Lerner Mosowitz was born in Sven, Romania on January 21, 1908. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1911. The son of a furrier, he was reared and educted in Brooklyn, New York, the only member of his family to receive a college education. In 1929 he entered the Creighton University School of Medicine. He proved to be a brilliant student and interrupted his education to obtain a masters degree, investigating the physiology of gastric secretion under the guidance of Professor Wilhelmj. He married his childhood sweetheart, Etta Kalin, in 1930.
In 1934 he received the M.D. degree and began an internship at the Douglas County Hospital, Omaha. He reluctantly gave up a promising career in research to devote himself to his first love, primary care medicine. Following internship, young Dr. Moskowitz was recrited by the Civilian Conservation Corps to serve as a physician while repaying his educational debts. Dr. and Mrs. Moskowitz soon found themselveds in rural Utah, in love with the beauty and freedom of the West. Dr. Moskowitz established a practice in family medicine in Brighan City, Utah in 1937.
Between 1937 and 1981, interrupted only be a tour of duty with the U.S. Army during WWII, Dr. Moskowitz was one of six family physicians serving a farming community of six thousand people. He devoted himself to the practice of medicine, and was available to make a house call come rain, sleet, snow, day or night. When time would afford him the luxury, he enjoyed golf and duck hunting. He was a leader in the community, as well as within the county and state medical societies.
During 49 years of family practice, he developed a reputation as an unusually astute diagnostician. He was trained to use all five of his senses to evaluate a patient, and it was said he could smell what was wrong with a sick patient. He was a master at physical diagnosis, and had a certain distrust of high technology. He read medical literature voraciously to maintain his knowledge at the cutting edge.
His practice required unusual flexibility and provided unending challenge. He was known to be aequally adept at delivering a colt or a heifer as he was deliverigh children. Many patients would trqavel 200 miles, bypassing more accessible doctors, just to see their trusted Dr. Moskowitz. Often, six trout or a few venison steaks were accepted as payment in full for his medical services.
In 1981 Dr. Moskowitz retired from full-time practice to part-tiem practice in Mesa, Arizona. He retired completely in 1986 at the age of 78. Simon Moskowitz died on August 14, 1989.
To his family, he was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. To the hundreds of patients who knew and loved him, he was at once their friend, advisor and shield during times of sickness. Simon Lerner Moskowitz was a true family physician.
