Dr. Frederic Mohs, shown here around 1960, developed a highly effective treatment for skin cancer while a medical student at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1930s.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ARCHIVES
A roadside sign that welcomes drivers to Burlington notes that the Wisconsin city was the boyhood home of Tony Romo, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current television commentator.
There is no mention of Frederic Edward Mohs, born there in 1910, the visionary physician who invented a skin-cancer procedure bearing his name that has benefited millions.
The filmmaker who just completed a documentary on Mohs’ life said he thought about having his camera pan down from the sign announcing Burlington to show Romo’s name.
“My original line was going to be something to the effect that even his hometown has forgotten about (Mohs),” Greg Jeschke told me. “Basically, there’s this guy who never even won a Super Bowl and he’s on a sign, and there’s nothing about the guy who invented the cure for skin cancer.”
For the documentary, which the Mohs family commissioned, Jeschke had access to materials including hand-written boyhood journals Mohs wrote in 1925 and 1926. Using those and other documents and scores of interviews, Jeschke portrays the UW-Madison physician as a brilliant, obsessively committed visionary.
Documentary filmmaker Greg Jeschke says it’s remarkable that Burlington, Wisconsin, trumpets the fact that a former NFL quarterback came from there, but “there’s nothing about the guy who invented the cure for skin cancer.” The latter is Frederic Mohs, who was born in Burlington in 1910.
“While many of you have heard his last name, Frederic Edward Mohs may be Wisconsin’s least known famous native,” suggests the film’s narrator. “But his ideas and work put him high on the short list of people who had a life-saving impact on the world.”
“Mohs surgery,” as it is called, is a highly precise outpatient procedure for treating common skin cancers by removing skin layer-by-layer and examining it microscopically until a sample is clear of cancer. The Mohs cure rate is 97% or higher when it is used (typically for basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas) and it spares healthy tissue, making it ideal for delicate areas like the face.
Jeschke’s name may be familiar as he was a high-profile news anchor for Madison’s WKOW television for 13 years until 2018. He started creating documentaries in the late 1990s and switched to it as his full-time job.
Jeschke’s documentary will premiere on Sunday, April 12, during the UW Science Expeditions event on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. It is open to the public with no ticket necessary at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. in the Health Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Ave.
Mohs’ path through life was not an easy one. His father died of tuberculosis three months after Mohs’ birth and his sister died of pneumonia in 1919, which led him to question his religious faith. His granddaughter, Linda Granato, recalls the family story of young Fred Mohs praying that his sister be spared the night before she died.
Mohs, shown here in a photo from Madison Central High School, faced a number of difficulties early in life including the death of his father three months after his birth and his sister’s death in 1919.
COURTESY OF THE MOHS FAMILY
“I think that was a really hard thing for him to grapple with,” she says in the documentary.
Mohs’ mother, Grace, became the sole breadwinner after her husband’s death and worked in a blanket factory and department store to ensure Fred and his brother got good educations. She also seemed to instill in young Fred an incredible tolerance for hard work.
Inventors such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford fascinated Mohs. In 1925, he wrote a journal entry suggesting that the clutch in automobiles might be unnecessary. It basically described the workings of an automatic transmission, which did not become available in American cars until 1940.
His brother convinced him that his talent for science and invention could apply to medicine, so he changed course. He was mentored and persuaded to stay in Madison by a UW-Madison professor who saw promise in the undergraduate.
During medical school, Mohs used rats for his cancer research. “He learned this technique for cutting and processing the tissues when he was in college,” said Michael Hetzer, a UW scientist and specialist in Mohs techniques for 30 years. “It was the speed, the efficiency, and the simplicity of it all that really appealed to Dr. Mohs. And that’s why he put two and two together and said, ‘If we can do it with rats, we can do it with people.’”
Mohs’ hand-written 75-page thesis on the subject helped him earn a medical degree and an internship.
“Always a great believer in efficiency,” the film’s narrator says, “the young Dr. Fred Mohs graduated and got married on the same day: June 18, 1934.”
Initially, his cancer procedure was controversial in conservative medical circles of the day. The American Journal of Cancer rejected a report he wrote about it, saying his claimed cure rate was not credible and would encourage “quacks” to imitate him. Eventually, establishment medical experts came around and the procedure was — and still is — used worldwide.
When Mohs (shown here at right in the 1970s) first developed his skin cancer treatment, the American Journal of Cancer rejected a report he wrote about it, saying his claimed cure rate was not credible and that publishing it would encourage “quacks” to imitate him.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ARCHIVES
Jeschke’s documentary has several telling anecdotes about Mohs. In 1959, he visited Russia to instruct doctors there on his methods. He even tried to learn Russian, though when he tried to make his presentation in that language, they asked him to revert to English.
“That he would take the time to do that, I thought, was very impressive,” says daughter-in-law Nancy Mohs in the documentary. (Nancy was the family point person for the documentary. Some may confuse Dr. Mohs with his son, Fred Mohs Jr., who was a prominent Madison attorney before retiring.)
The elder Mohs loved to celebrate the holidays, with a big tree and plenty of gifts, and would show movies and slides, including slides of his surgeries. “I am sure no one else had a Christmas like that,” Nancy comments in the film.
Mohs retired from surgery in 1986, but his namesake procedure gained national attention when President Ronald Reagan had it in 1987.
One last note: Mohs prioritized use of his technique over profiting from it. In 1939, he turned over patent rights to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in exchange for the working space and resources needed to grow his technique.
“As far as his work was concerned, it was very important to him that it not be licensed in any way,” Nancy Mohs comments in the film. “He wanted to make sure anyone could use his procedure, worldwide.”
Jeschke titled his superb documentary “History of a Life of Good Luck,” which was the title of one of Mohs’ final lectures to colleagues. He died in 2002, at age 92.
It seems to me the good luck was by all those who benefitted from his work.
Cap Times President and Publisher Paul Fanlund oversees the company’s business and journalism operations, writes a weekly column and is a board member of The Capital Times Co. and vice president of the Evjue Foundation, the company’s charitable arm.
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“History of a Life of Good Luck”
Greg Jeschke’s documentary about the life of Dr. Frederic Mohs will premiere on Sunday, April 12, during the UW Science Expeditions event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The screenings are free and open to the public at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. in the Health Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Ave.