Stuart Fischer, M.D. teaches individuals to improve their lives by making health a priority. Able to explain complex medical information in clear language that virtually anyone can understand, he is the author of The Little Book of Big Medical Emergencies: How to Recognize and Respond to the Most Common Medical Emergencies (Hatherleigh Press, 2007) and founder of The Park Avenue Diet Center, which provides a revolutionary and uniquely comprehensive approach to weight and self-image management.

Dr. Fischer has a long history with the media as a featured guest on numerous television shows, including The Early Show (CBS), Inside Edition, FOX and Friends, The Montel Williams Show, Geraldo, CNN This Morning, and local ABC, FOX and CW affiliates. Interviews with Dr. Fischer have appeared in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Sunday Times of London, Star Magazine and WebMD, as well as dozens of diverse journals. New York radio audiences enjoyed his popular weekly series Vital Signs every Saturday morning for eight years, in addition to 350 other broadcasts.

Dr. Fischer’s expertise in alternative medicine, nutrition and weight loss is complemented by his strong, traditional hospital-based education. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Dr. Fischer is a graduate of Yale University. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn and served four years as an attending physician in the emergency room of Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan. He also worked with the late Dr. Robert Atkins for nine years as the associate medical director of The Atkins Center. Since 1997, he has been in private practice in New York City.

THE ART OF MEDICINE

“The Physician” by Cole Porter (Yale, 1913)

Coming Soon

this 1933 song from Nymph Errant, made famous by the legendary Gertrude Lawrence, describes the plight of a shy patient infatuated with a healthcare practitioner. Or is it the other way around? The racy imagery and naughty language have titillated audiences for decades, awaiting a deconstructed reinterpretation by a male, Yale-educated physician, perhaps the unexpressed wish of the composer.

“The Sailor's Tango” by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill

Coming Soon

Two theater giants combined their talents memorably in several landmark musicals including Happy End, the source for this haunting 1929 ballade of doomed sailors. The hypnotic tango rhythms frame an eternal dance of death between all living things and the inexorable forces of nature. An interplay between Brecht‘s fatalism and Weill’s pungent harmonics makes each song a unique and unforgettable masterpiece.

“Little Red Riding Hood” by the Brothers Grimm

Physical diagnosis, especially as applied to interspecies anatomical differences, plays a pivotal role in this 1812 thriller. A brave act of emergency surgery rescues our two heroines from certain death by pancreatic enzymes.
Length—9:38, Size—8.2MB Real Player

“The Wound Dresser” by Walt Whitman

As a nurse in the Civil War, the legendary poet witnessed horrors and tragedies unknown to modern civilization. Reflecting back several decades later, he reminisces in this poem about his own experiences as a comforter of the sick and a healer of the wounded.
Length—7:55, Size—7.4MB Real Player

“Knoxville: Summer of 1915”

This hypnotically effective prose-poem describes the sights, sounds, and smells of a sultry evening in the South. It serves as a prologue to A Death in the Family, a masterpiece by James Agee. Here, a child narrates a scenario of habitual activities as night descends on a small community of families. He is confronted ultimately by an unanswerable question, namely “What is the nature of existence?”
Length—15:38, Size—14.5MB Real Player

The Canterbury Tales: “Prologue: the Doctor of Medicine”

Although it was written 400 years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous poem resonates with modern audiences. The doctor described has many features in common with his modern colleagues. Dr. Fischer begins this selection by reciting the opening passages in the original Middle English.
Length—5:31, Size—5MB Real Player

Ulysses: Chapter 14, “Oxen of the Sun” (excerpts) by James Joyce

In this linguistically dazzling sequence from James Joyce’s 1922 masterpiece, medical students at a Dublin maternity hosp ital discuss obstetrics, birth defects, and human pathology while drinking themselves into incoherent intoxication. The chapter also mirrors the 40-week development of the human fetus (and the English language itself), from conception (in pseudo-Latin and non-grammatical Anglo-Saxonish outbursts) through embryological development (lengthy rantings in the style of famous British writers) to birth (in modern American, Irish, and nonsensical slang). This literary roller-coaster ride is unique in Western prose, an opaque, challenging, and hilarious masterpiece.
Length—22:37, Size—20.5MB Real Player

Death in Venice (excerpts) by Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella combines erotic passion, post-Romantic angst, and lethal infectious disease, describing the tormented writer Gustav von Aschenbach’s fateful trip to the Italian port. In this set of scenes, he is troubled by suspicious words from a street musician (the Angel of Death?) and rushes to a tourist agency, only to discover horrifying news.
Length—12:35, Size—11.6MB Real Player

“You Are Old, Father William” by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll’s famed nursery rhyme is a debate of sorts between Youth and Age, one that both children and adults can enjoy. During a 1981 visit to Oxford University (where Carroll taught) Dr. Fischer was taken by a mathematics professor to the actual rabbit hole that is the entrance to Alice’s “Wonderland”!
Length—2:12, Size—2MB Real Player

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (excerpts)

A masterpiece of modern theater and a shocking melodrama at the same time, Ghosts confronts the duplicitous hypocrisy hiding behind Victorian morality. A Norwegian widow knew that her late husband was promiscuous, but she now learns that he contracted syphilis and transmitted this incurable infection to her only son, Oswald. In this scene, the young man describes his failing health, accepts his horrible fate, and asks his mother to do the unthinkable. Ibsen's "ghosts" are not spectral spirits but delusions and philosophical myths that provide a false sense of security--especially where fatal venereal diseases are concerned.
Length—10:20, Size—9.8MB Real Player

“Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Considered to be among the most beautiful poems in the English language, this reverie about the Mongol emperor and his kingdom has been thought by some controversial scholars to be an actual hallucination. Coleridge was addicted to medically prescribed laudanum (a liquid form of opium) and his dazzling visions may have been stimulated by endorphin receptors as well as the Romantic Era’s obsession with exotica, erotica, and the wilds of nature.
Length—3:07, Size—3MB Real Player

How to Cope with Stress

Discussing stress from two different perspectives, Dr. Fischer and his mentor Dr. Stanley Krippner cover this important health issue with entertaining insights and practical advice. You will understand the biochemistry and neuroscience of stress as never before. Dr. Krippner brings a lifetime of insights and wisdom that only a master humanistic psychologist can provide.
Length—1:18:37, Size—18MB Real Player

What is a Healer?

This remarkable lecture has long been considered the most outstanding in Dr. Fischer’s continuing series at Dorot. Having studied anthropology, social psychology, and humanitarian issues for decades, Dr. Stanley Krippner is the ideal guide to a comparative study between allopathic medicine and non-Western healing techniques. Listen to this fascinating talk more than once. It is entertaining, enlightening, and ultimately thrilling.
Length—1:18:56, Size—18MB Real Player

Interview with legendary Native American Medicine Man Rolling Thunder

Dr. Stuart Fischer Interviews legendary Cherokee Medicine Man Rolling Thunder. A rare recording produced for broadcast on Dr. Fischer's radio program "Vital Signs with Dr. Stuart Fischer."
Length—25:22, Size—9.3MB Real Player

All About Cholesterol

Is your cholesterol good or bad, high or low, beneficial or dangerous? How does cholesterol travel through the bloodstream? How does it cause a heart attack or stroke? Spend an hour with Dr. Fischer and you will understand this complex and controversial subject as never before.
Length—1:02:17, Size—10.6MB Real Player

I've Got Rhythm

"I've Got Rhythm": Your heart is capable of beating regularly, irregularly, fast, slow, chaotically, dysfunctionally, or not at all. Audiences marvel at Dr. Fischer's discussion of this complex topic and understand it never before. You'll enjoy learning how to interpret your own heartbeat and pulse, even if you're not George Gershwin.
Length - 1:09:53, Size - 13.7MB Real Player

What is a Medical Emergency?

As an Attending Physician in a crowded New York City emergency room and as an author on this extremely important topic, Dr. Fischer has become highly regarded as an expert teacher on this crucially important area of health care. He has enlightened medical students, nurses, orderlies, paramedics, and patients. You have a 1 in 3 chance of having a medical emergency this year. Listen to this interesting, potentially life-saving information today!
Length—1:05'58, Size—11.3MB Real Player

Understanding Blood Tests

Can you read and appreciate those dozens of lab reports that you get every year from your doctor? Do you know what to look for to see if you are at risk for heart disease, diabetes, or arthritis? Listen to Dr. Fischer's lecture before and after your annual check-up. This entertaining talk gives you complex information in simple language; you will appreciate your liver/kidney/pancreatic function, cholesterol count, and immune function as never before.
Length—1:07:20, Size—11.5MB Real Player

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