NYT -- Salvator Altchek, "the $5 Doctor" of Brooklyn, Dies at 92
September 15, 2002
Salvator Altchek, 'the $5 Doctor' of Brooklyn, Dies at 92
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Salvator Altchek, known for 67 years as the $5 doctor to
the melting pot of Brooklyn, especially the poorer
residents of affluent Brooklyn Heights, died on Tuesday. He
was 92.
He continued to work until two months ago, but gave up
house calls five years ago. He delivered thousands of
babies and generally attended to the health needs of anyone
who showed up at his basement office in the Joralemon
Street row house in the Heights where he lived, charging $5
or $10 when he charged at all.
The office, with its faded wallpaper of Parisian scenes,
cracked leather furniture and antique medical devices, had
not changed much since Jimmy Rios got his first penicillin
shot there half a century ago.
"You could walk into his office and he could tell you what
you had before you sat down," Mr. Rios said.
Dr. Altchek often made his house calls on foot, carrying
his black medical bag. He treated the poorest people,
angering his wife by sending one away with his own winter
coat. He welcomed longshoremen and lawyers, store owners
and streetwalkers. One patient insisted on always paying
him $100 to make up for some of those who could not pay at
all.
A few years ago, a homeless man knocked on his door and
said he had walked all the way from Long Island to have a
wounded finger treated. He had last seen the doctor as a
toddler growing up in Brooklyn Heights more than 50 years
before.
The doctor sometimes greeted 70-year-olds he had delivered.
While it is unclear whether he was the oldest and
longest-working physician in the city, he was very likely
the only one nicknamed "the $5 doctor." When his practice
opened, he treated Arab-Americans around Atlantic Avenue
and was the favored doctor of the Puerto Ricans who began
to live in the row houses of Columbia Place, near the
waterfront, in the 1930's.
"He wasn't out to make money; he was out to help people,"
said Sara Mercado, whose daughter was delivered by Dr.
Altchek. People in her family were among his first
patients.
Ramon Colon, in his book about a Puerto Rican leader,
"Carlos Tapia: A Puerto Rican Hero in New York" (Vantage,
1976), wrote:
"He is a physician who treated the poor and never asked for
money from the oppressed community. They paid when they had
it, and he treated them as though they were Park Avenue
residents."
Salvator Altchek was born in 1910 in Salonika, then part of
the Turkish Ottoman Empire, now part of Greece. As
Sephardic Jews, with roots long ago in Spain, the Altcheks
spoke Ladino, a form of Spanish spoken by Sephardim that
dates back to the 15th century.
The family became part of New York's ethnic rainbow when
his father, David, who spoke a half-dozen additional
languages, brought the family to the city in 1914, in
steerage. They lived at first on the Lower East Side, but
moved to Spanish Harlem, where they felt more comfortable
with Spanish-speaking people.
Dr. Altchek's father took a variety of jobs, including
selling fudge at Macy's. But as a professional fermentation
engineer, his main income, even during Prohibition, came
from the ouzo, cherry brandy and wine he discreetly made
and sold.
Salvator Altchek and his seven brothers and sisters made
deliveries. In a favorite family story, he delivered wine
to a buyer who admired it and speculated on the vintage.
"That's fresh," the boy chirped. "He just made it."
He
graduated from Columbia and attended New York Medical
College, then in Manhattan and now in Westchester County.
Emanuel Altchek, the oldest brother and the first of three
of the brothers to graduate from medical school, paid
Salvator's tuition. Salvator, in turn, paid his brother
Victor's way.
Salvator Altchek worked in Prospect Heights Hospital, long
since closed. But he decided that he wanted his own
practice. For more than half a century, he began his
workday at 8 a.m., took a half-hour off for dinner at 5
p.m. and closed the office door at 8. He then made house
calls, often until midnight.
He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. Walking down a
street, he would recognize gay lovers, Mafia soldiers and
prominent lawyers. He often greeted someone by grabbing his
hand and taking his pulse. His passion for preventive
medicine surpassed his tact.
"Hello, dear, you're looking well," he would say to a
patient. "You put on a little weight, didn't you?"
When his wife, Blanche, died 32 years ago, he fell into a
depression. His sister Stella Shapiro heard him advise a
patient to find another doctor. But he gradually recovered
by throwing himself into his work.
He never remarried and was especially proud of the tall
linden tree in front of his house, which he dedicated to
his wife. He built a bench around it that neighbors and
strollers could use.
In addition to his brother Victor and sister Stella, both
of Manhattan, he is survived by his daughters, Susan Aroldi
of Saddle River, N.J., and Phyllis Sanguinetti of Buenos
Aires; four grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
Dr. Altchek was a constant personality in a neighborhood
that changed many times, from proper society enclave to
wartime boardinghouse district to artistic bohemia to haven
for young professionals. When Truman Capote, then a
Brooklyn Heights resident, invited him to his famed Black
and White Ball in 1966, the doctor did not know who Capote
was until he finally recalled his face from the steam bath
of the St. George Hotel, Caren Pauley, a niece, said.
Once when he was held up at gunpoint, Dr. Altchek said he
could not give the would-be robber any money because he had
a date with an attractive woman, Ms. Pauley recalled. The
robber, recognizing him, reached into his own pocket and
gave him $10.
Dr. Ozgun Tasdemir, a physician who immigrated from Turkey,
made Turkish candy for him, having noticed his cache of
Turkish desserts in the office refrigerator. She said he
brought the latest literature on her ailment to share with
her.
Dr. Altchek stopped making house calls only when he could
no longer walk up steps easily. He did not renew his
malpractice insurance when it expired in July. He began
calling up other doctors, asking them to take his patients
who had no insurance.
His brother Victor said that Dr. Altchek had correctly
diagnosed the abdominal condition that led to his own
death. His last spoken thought was to remember that he owed
a patient a medical report.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
