Sexual Charges Turn Spotlight on Doctor Who Chose Limelight : Medicine: Dr. Neil Solomon’s ex-patients tell of being rescued from the rubble of their self-images, then of being exploited.

Dr. Neil Solomon was a godsend, a doctor who listened, looked his patients in the eye and said he understood. No other doctor had paid attention to the overweight, depressed women who traveled great distances to see him.

The sex didn’t start right away. First there were compliments--”I find you desirable”--a surprising touch, a kiss. By the time the intimacies began, they seemed a natural outgrowth of an uncommon bond between doctor and patient.

Former patients interviewed by the Baltimore Sun described a pattern--of a doctor who rescued them from the rubble of their shattered self-images, then exploited their trust by luring them into sex. For several, the aftermath has been ruinous: a broken marriage, a nervous collapse, depression and years of psychotherapy.

The aftermath has been equally ruinous for Solomon, who since the early 1970s had actively promoted himself through diet books, a nationally syndicated health column and TV talk show appearances.

Solomon surrendered his medical license in October after admitting 20 years of sexual improprieties with at least eight female patients. In one of its harshest sanctions ever, a state medical board made it virtually impossible for him to practice medicine anywhere again.

But Solomon’s public admission revealed only one aspect of the questions surrounding his medical practice. A two-month investigation by The Sun, which included a review of public documents and interviews with 56 people--former patients, former employees, medical professionals and others--has found evidence not only of sexual misconduct but also of questionable ethics and medical practices:

* Bud Cohen, a retired marketing consultant from Arizona, said a four-year affair between his wife and Solomon destroyed his marriage. He said the affair began in the early 1970s after his wife began flying cross-country to see the doctor for weight control.

* A former patient said she was lying on an examining table one day when Solomon, without warning, forced an act of oral sex. She said that the episode, which occurred when she was a young woman, left her emotionally shattered and that she has been seeing psychotherapists ever since.

* Denise Parr, two weeks into her job as a medical technician in Solomon’s office, said she was startled when he asked her to give him an electrocardiogram and then unnecessarily stripped naked for the test. The 20-year-old was fired after telling co-workers of the incident.

* Hilda B. Falk of New York City spent more than $31,000 on allergy drops made and sold by Solomon’s office during the three years she was his patient. Before she died in 1988, she wrote a new will that placed him in line to inherit $575,000 from her estate. After her death, her family filed a malpractice suit, then settled the case by forcing Solomon to forgo the inheritance.

Solomon built a $500,000-a-year medical practice founded on theories concerning the diagnosis and treatment of allergies that have not been supported by scientific investigation. A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990 said the methods work only by the power of suggestion, and “independent of the contents of the syringe.”

Smokers and overweight women flocked to Solomon in response to magazine articles about his theories that cigarette smoking and obesity could be treated as allergies.

Dr. Martin Douglas Valentine, clinical director of the Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center, said the assertion that obesity can be treated by “neutralizing” a food allergy “is baloney. . . . It doesn’t work, and there has never been a study that has shown that it works.” That similar treatments might cure a tobacco habit “makes no sense medically,” he said.

Offered repeated opportunities to comment on the allegations contained in this article, Solomon steadfastly declined. “I’d love to talk, but on the advice of counsel, I just can’t,” he said.

His attorney, E. Dale Adkins III, said, “I simply think it would not be productive to meet with you to discuss the allegations or information that you proposed to put in your article.”

Although Solomon would not comment, nine of his former patients praised him in interviews with The Sun, calling him a medical genius and an exemplary person.

“He’s the finest man I have ever met,” said Jean Laderman of Fair Lawn, N.J., who saw him for allergies and hormonal problems. “He is the epitome of what a doctor should be. Dr. Solomon made you feel as if, when you were in his office, you were the only patient that existed.”

Many patients said they were drawn to his practice because of his impressive credentials. He wrote frequently in popular women’s magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal and Harper’s Bazaar, and the publications often noted his Hopkins faculty affiliation.

Solomon skillfully cultivated his image. He published nine books on weight loss and fitness aimed at general readers and appeared on TV talk shows. He also was widely visible through his syndicated newspaper advice column, which was ghostwritten.

Former employees said more than 90% of his patients were from out of state. Most were women.

Solomon’s practice did not come under public scrutiny until this past summer, when three former patients filed malpractice suits alleging that he lured them into sexual relationships while they were under his care during the late 1980s.

The women’s names were sealed by the court to spare them humiliation. All three are represented by attorney Joanne L. Suder of Baltimore.

One of the women said she accepted his offer of a clerical job, then learned he was “engaging in similar activities with other patients” and had devised a code for tracking his sexual liaisons in his desk diary.

The Sun has spoken with four additional patients who allegedly had sexual relations with Solomon under similar circumstances as early as the mid-1970s. None has taken legal action.

Three of the four women gave interviews but asked The Sun to withhold their names because of the sexual nature of their experiences. The story of the fourth patient was told by her former husband, Cohen, who asked that she remain anonymous.

Bud Cohen, 66, a retired marketing consultant from Arizona, said his ex-wife consulted Solomon after years of battling an eating disorder with pills, weight-loss groups and diets. But every success was followed by depressing periods of binge eating and weight gain.

In the early 1970s, she consulted Solomon after seeing him on a TV talk show. His wife, then in her 30s, flew to Baltimore a few times a year for appointments. Solomon put her on a strict diet, augmenting it with vitamins and liquids.

Meanwhile, Cohen and Solomon became acquainted. The physician asked Cohen to use his marketing connections to help place a fledgling diet product in stores. Cohen said he helped Solomon make contacts but nothing came of them.

Cohen said his wife saw Solomon several times outside his medical office. Once, during a trip to Las Vegas with her children and mother-in-law, she left to visit him.

“People are going to think that I am dumb,” Cohen said. “But I don’t care. I was a very trusting person. I still am.”

By 1977, Cohen had begun to suspect that his wife’s relationship with Solomon had become deeply personal. When he accused her of having an affair, he said, she confessed.

In a rage, he said, he called Solomon and accused him of sleeping with his wife.

“I don’t remember if he admitted it or denied it,” Cohen said. But within weeks, the call accomplished one thing. Solomon sent him a one-sentence letter declaring that “there will be no further communications between ourselves and our respective families.”

In the following weeks, Cohen said, he found notes that had been written to his wife. In 1974, Solomon had given her a copy of his new diet book inscribed: “To a woman I admire, respect and love.” Cohen furnished copies of the notes to The Sun.

After trying for five years to repair their shattered marriage, Cohen said, he and his wife divorced.

Allegations of sexual misconduct did not always involve intimacy.

Two years ago, Denise Parr was hired by Solomon to give allergy injections.

Parr said she was puzzled when her boss asked her to administer his annual physical, a task far beyond her training. He explained that it was a good way to learn office procedures.

She prepared to give him an electrocardiogram, which measures heart function. Patients usually remove their shirts, shoes and socks and roll up their pants legs so that electrodes can be applied. But when she and another employee turned around, she said, Solomon was naked.

Startled, she asked him to sit on an examining table and covered him with a paper robe.

Later, after she had mentioned the incident to co-workers, a supervisor told her that “things weren’t working out” and fired her.

Solomon’s exploitation of sick, vulnerable patients was not limited to sexual contact with women who came to him in despair over their weight. He also appears to have taken financial advantage of people who came to him in despair over their health.

Hundreds of patients who had found no acceptable diagnosis for their symptoms, despite visits to a succession of doctors, consulted Solomon because they had heard he had both an explanation and a cure for what ailed them.

The explanation was frequently an allergy, often multiple allergies, to common substances his patients never suspected. Often, they were allergies that had never been diagnosed before. His cure, a regimen of injections or drops, raise eyebrows among traditional allergists.

Solomon built most of his practice around a set of theories that have been scientifically controversial for at least 15 years and remain unproven today.

The practice was lucrative. A financial statement filed with his federal bankruptcy proceeding stated his 1992 income from his medical practice at $538,000 and his net worth at more than $2 million.

His treatments included the sale of “neutralizing drops” that patients used sublingually, under the tongue. Made in his own office, the drops were sold to patients at $60 for a 30-dose vial.

Solomon’s technique for allergy diagnosis and treatment, called provocation-neutralization, has been rejected as implausible and ineffective by the nation’s two leading specialty associations for allergists and immunologists.

But Solomon believed he was on the cutting edge, and he experimented with provocation-neutralization as a remedy for obesity and cigarette smoking.

In a 1980 article in Ladies’ Home Journal, Solomon said he had found that some obese patients who failed on various diets were in fact allergic to certain foods.

Martin Douglas Valentine, an allergy specialist and clinical director of the Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center, said the concept of “neutralizing” a food allergy to increase metabolism “is baloney. . . . It doesn’t work, and there has never been a study that has shown that it works.”

Five former employees who worked closely with Solomon for various periods from 1985 to 1991 told The Sun they had long doubted the integrity of his medical practice. They said they kept their concerns private, partly because he demanded that each worker sign an agreement promising not to discuss office matters with outsiders. They said he threatened to sue anyone who talked.

The employees, who asked not to be identified, alleged that Solomon deceived his patients in various ways. They alleged that he told patients he performed tests when he did not, directed certain workers to handle aspects of patient care for which they were not qualified and made wide use of placebos--drops and injections that contained no active ingredients.

Despite these concerns, there is no public record of complaints from the medical community and no evidence of an investigation by medical authorities until the recent lawsuits.