THE DOCTOR IS IN; MAKING HIS ROUNDS FOR 50 YEARS; 82-YEAR-OLD HAS PLANS TO TREAT INTO 21ST CENTURY.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

He's been called the Marcus Welby of Glendale, having treated thousands of patients for nagging coughs, stomach ulcers and countless other ailments over his 56-year career as a general practitioner.

Although Dr. Elwyn Stiles, M.D., is nearing 83, he is nowhere near talking retirement, still rising at dawn three times a week to make the 6 a.m. rounds at Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center.

Around the hospital, where he will soon mark his 50th year, Stiles has become something of an icon, fabled for his unflagging commitment to medicine as well as for the rose he wears in his lapel every day to work.

Always dapper and witty but also quite matter-of-fact, Stiles said Wednesday, while sitting in his plant-filled office, that he has every intention of practicing into the next millennium.

``I still enjoy what I do,'' said Stiles, his white physician's smock covering a pinstripe shirt and white tie with red polka dots. ``I'm not ready to retire.''

That's excellent news for the hospital, said Dr. Dario Perez, Glendale Memorial's chief of staff, who called Stiles a top-notch doctor and the institution's longest-serving physician.

``I have never been his patient, but I would never hesitate to be his patient,'' Perez said, adding that Glendale Memorial is planning to commemorate Stiles' 50th anniversary at the hospital, which officially will roll around Wednesday.

``He is so caring, considerate, thorough and has always provided the very best care to the community,'' Perez said.

But Stiles has no use for kudos, preferring instead to joke as he apologized to a photographer for a coughing fit brought on by a lingering case of laryngitis.

``That won't show up on the picture, will it?'' Stiles said of the illness.

When Stiles arrived at Glendale Memorial - then Physicians and Surgeons Hospital - on July 16, 1947, America was in a bit of a post-war slump, he recalled.

The young doctor, who had graduated from medical school at Loma Linda University six years earlier, then was driving a two-door Oldsmobile coupe that he had bought new for $650. (Now he tools around in a primrose-yellow 1967 Jaguar convertible, the envy of many staff members.)

The hospital, which now has 315 beds, at the time had only 60.

``I know we used to have beds in hallways because there wasn't enough room for all the patients,'' said Stiles, who was born in Riverside but grew up in Michigan.

But Stiles said he has been far more moved by the staggering advances in medicine since he first started toting around a stethoscope, ticking off examples such as the virtual elimination of polio, small pox and tuberculosis.

``We didn't have any blood-pressure medicine. We didn't have any antibiotics,'' said Stiles, who lives in Glendale with his wife, Evelyn, a retired nurse. ``When a person had pneumonia, they pretty much got well or died.''

To keep pace with the changes in his profession, Stiles, like other physicians, routinely enrolls in post-graduate courses and attends workshops at the hospital.

In addition to making hospital rounds, Stiles sees an average of 50 patients a week for everything ranging from ingrown toenails to appendicitis at the hospital doctors' offices called Family Medicine Physicians of Glendale.

``You can tell him anything, and you feel that he is listening to you,'' said Laverne Thompson, an 83-year-old Glendale resident, who has been a Stiles patient for more than 35 years. ``He is very helpful. So many times when I felt stressed out about one medical problem or another, in a minute he would have me calmed down.''

Stiles is a rarity in this age of managed care and hospital conglomerates, Thompson said. He interrupts meetings to take calls from patients. And she says he sticks around in the examining room to answer every last question.

Elvira Villa, Stiles' nurse and office manager, said Thompson's comments echo those of other patients.

``He sympathizes, he empathizes and yet he jokes,'' Villa said. ``I think that is why patients like him.''

One of Stiles' sons - Stiles has three children - has followed in his father's footsteps and is a doctor in Napa County.

But Stiles, whose parents both had trained as nurses, said that becoming a doctor for him was never a lifelong dream but something he decided to pursue after his older brother Waldo went into medicine.

``The sky didn't open up and say you're going to be a doctor,'' Stiles said.

However he chose his profession, patients and colleagues never fail to comment on Stiles' untiring devotion to medicine.

In a trademark that reveals Stiles' pride in what he does, he comes to work every morning with a rose from his extensive garden pinned to his lapel, a habit that started 50 years ago when nurses used to give him a flower for that very purpose.

``So when they didn't pin the rose on me, I started bringing my own rose to put on,'' Stiles said. ``I guess it stuck.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Dr. Elwyn Stiles has seen many medical advances in 50 years at Glendale Memorial Hospital.

(2) Dr. Elwyn Stiles wears a lei he shaped into a heart for his nurses in a 1972 photo.

David Sprague/Daily News