About Me

I practiced academic pediatric surgery for 40 years. Stepped down as Surgeon-in-Chief at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in 2009. Prior to medical school, I studied medieval history. Now Tina and I live in a cabin in the woods on a lake in southwest Michigan.

I study classical and late (medieval) Latin as you can tell from the two books I have self-published: Cicero on Old Age and The Poetry of St. Peter Damian

When I can take time away from my attempts to read Latin without decoding each word, I have embarked on a study of how Peter Damian spent his time. During my career as a pediatric surgeon, I was fortunate to be personal friends with several people of whom I could say “they do more in an afternoon than I plan to do in my career.” That description fits Peter Damian as well. Yet he is the only one with whom I am familiar who did that “more in an afternoon” in areas requiring such diverse temperaments: a hermit devoted to solitude, prayer, contemplation, fasting, scourging. Still, he was an administrator, fundraiser, bishop, cardinal, and papal legate. Further he was a voluminous writer of prose and poetry and very much in demand as teacher and preacher.  

Click to view my CV

Also, for a long time I blogged at: https://mdkleinmd.blogspot.com/  It started as a relatively popular site called: Pediatric Surgery Journal Club and then morphed into some personal opinions and thoughts.