Schmidt, Louis E. (Louis Ernst), 1869-1957

Louis Ernst Schmidt was born in Chicago January 18, 1869. His father, Ernst Schmidt, a Union Army surgeon, was Cook County’s first elected coroner and a friend of Joseph Medill, founding editor of the Chicago Tribune. Schmidt received his Ph.G from the Chicago College of Pharmacy in 1889 and his BS from the University of Michigan in 1892. He earned concurrent MS and MD degrees from Northwestern in 1895. He went on to study medicine in Vienna, Breslau, Berlin, Paris and London from 1896 to 1898.

Schmidt had a distinguished career as medical educator and surgeon. He specialized in dermatology and later in urology, uro-genital surgery and venereology and was an attending physician in urology at many Chicago hospitals over the years. His contributions to medicine and Northwestern University were numerous and vast. He was an instructor at Northwestern in clinical dermatology and syphilogy from 1898 to 1902 and in genito-urinary surgery from 1902 to 1939, serving as head of the department of urology from 1916 to 1939. Schmidt is often referred to as “the father of urology,” conducting his practice as a training ground for urologists. He held a professorship at Northwestern in urology from 1939 until moving to emeritus status in 1946. Schmidt contributed his personal stock of radium, worth $175,000, to Northwestern in 1935 and gave an estimated $100,000 to the Illinois Social Hygiene League to fight venereal disease. Because of his expertise in fighting venereal disease Schmidt held many local civic appointments, including Chicago Vice Commission 1910, and director of VD Control for the Chicago Department of Health from 1923 to 1928. A tireless fighter against VD and for affordable medical care, Schmidt advocated the free and open discussion of venereal disease as the only way to stem what was at that time an epidemic. He was instrumental in the formation and passing of the Illinois marriage laws requiring the tests for venereal disease.

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