Photo by Adam Ewing
In 2010, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, emeritus chair of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and an infectious diseases epidemiologist, penned the medical thriller “Labyrinth of Terror.”
The book, from Brandylane Publishers of Richmond and available through Amazon, introduced readers to Jake Evans, an epidemiologist who’s in a race to stop a global pandemic with the help of Elizabeth Foster, an agent with British security service MI5, and Christopher Rose, a microbiologist/IT specialist. Terrorists have unleashed a weaponized organism in the book, but Wenzel says there are some parallels between his fiction and today’s reality, the COVID-19 pandemic. “COVID-19 is similar to what I’ve written about the pandemic: the uncertainty, the serious consequences, a confused public seeking truth, politicians giving false reassurances,” he says in an email.
His second book featuring those characters, “Dreams of Troy,” came out in 2017. “It’s about cyber terror, with the targets being public health systems, hospitals and patients with devices,” Wenzel says.
He’s on pace this year to publish his third novel, a mystery set in Italy. Wenzel’s forays into fiction followed the publication of a collection of essays on his life in epidemiology, seven textbooks and articles in more than 500 scientific publications. “My wife always said, ‘You’ll influence more people with fiction than nonfiction anyway,’ ” he says.
Similar to bestselling author John Grisham, who leaned on his expertise as a trial lawyer to create compelling characters and believable scenarios for his legal thrillers, Wenzel relies on his medical and scientific expertise in his writing.
“I think that makes the story believable, and people can hopefully understand the science behind the engineered organism I was talking about that was also multiresistant to drugs,” he says, regarding the bioterror science in his novels.
Finding a Specialty
While fiction serves as a creative outlet, medicine has been Wenzel’s life for the past 50 years. As you’d expect from a physician who’s a writer, there’s a story behind his career path.
When he was 8 and living in Philadelphia, Wenzel loved to climb trees. One day after school, he fell. “I was climbing trees with a good friend, and I was about 20 feet up. I stepped on something that didn’t hold me, [fell] and fractured my hip and femur,” he says. “I spent about a month in the hospital on a jungle gym of weights and pulleys and had a lot of exposure to medicine.”
Wenzel’s time in rehabilitation led him to choose medicine as a career to “do things for other people.” While in medical school, one particular class piqued his interest and set the course for the rest of his life. “The microbiology class was so fascinating that I really loved it,” he says.
This love was cemented when a professor sent him and another student to work with a Navy medical team in the Philippines. “I spent several weeks living in the Philippines during an outbreak of cholera, and we saw 100 patients a day,” Wenzel says. “And I thought, ‘This is it!’ Whatever infectious disease was particularly international, that’s where I thought I need to be.”
His work overseas in infectious diseases continued when, while seeking out his medical residency, the chair of medicine at University of Maryland offered to send him to Bangladesh. For three months, he saw 50 patients with cholera each day, and also got to work with patients suffering from smallpox, a disease that was eliminated in 1980.
After returning to the United States in 1970 to study internal medicine and infectious disease at the University of Maryland, Wenzel received orders to serve with the military in Vietnam. Though he volunteered to join the Navy, hoping to land on a ship, he was assigned to the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
Wenzel treated outbreaks of meningitis, exotic kinds of virus infections and other infections, including Hepatitis B from substance abuse. “We just got a lot of experience seeing unusual infections, and all the malaria that was coming back from Vietnam was in hospital,” he says.
Training Programs
Following a two-year stint in the Marines, the University of Virginia recruited Wenzel based on his knowledge of studying viruses and writing white papers on the prevention of infectious diseases.
“I was experienced in the military with studying viruses and something called mycoplasma pneumonia,” Wenzel says. “And they said, ‘That’s just what we’re looking for.’ So I got to Charlottesville, and they said, ‘Oh, there’s one more thing. The hospital just had an outbreak of infections after orthopedic surgery, and they wanted somebody to start an infection control program — and it pays half your salary.’ ”
He created a nationally leading program at UVA within five years. He trained people from other programs in infection control, and fellows from around the country and the world came to learn from him. “We were incredibly productive with some manuscripts in medical scientific journals, too,” he says.
“My career in infection control grew out of a serendipity,” Wenzel says. “I spent a year at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where I got my MSc in epidemiology, a lot of statistics, and worked with their top statistician. And while I was there, I was recruited to lead a new division they were creating at the University of Iowa called clinical epidemiology.”
After a nine-year run at the University of Iowa, Wenzel came to Richmond by way of an opportunity at VCU. “I was offered the job of chairman of internal medicine at Medical College of Virginia, and it was a great fit,” he says.
Wenzel has earned nine professional awards, including the Maxwell Finland Award for Career in Infectious Diseases from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, of which he is most proud, and he also has served as editor-at-large of The New England Journal of Medicine for 20 years. The accolades have been satisfying, but his love for sharing knowledge and inspiring the next generation of physicians trumps all.
“I think, of all the things I love in medicine, teaching people and teaching them to ask the right questions is very exciting to me,” he says. “I tell my trainees that in high school, college, in medical school and even later in their postgraduate training, they’re judged by their answers, but in life, you’re really judged not by your answers, but by your questions.
“That’s a key thing that I try to impart. And if I can get [students] excited and inspired, that’s real teaching.”
Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and we’ll drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Twitter and Facebook.
