Signature: Dr. Michael Lee Rolfsen

Inside the Baton Rouge Clinic on Perkins Road is a geography professor’s dream, a mini-museum of world cultures. There is a military whistle from Baghdad, an evocative photo portrait titled “Old Korean gentleman,” stacks of postcards, figurines and prayer beads, and even a vial of dirt from the streets of Calcutta.

In 1990, Dr. Michael Rolfsen’s collection began humbly with a Kenyan carved giraffe some friends brought back to him as a thank-you gift for administering the proper vaccines before their African safari. Emporiatrics (travel medicine) was a new field for the internist, but Rolfsen enjoyed researching hepatitis A and typhoid and yellow fevers and making sure his friends stayed healthy oversees.

Word spread quickly, and he became Baton Rouge’s de facto “inoculation doc.” Now the LSU graduate vaccinates up to five future travelers a day, and he has the artifacts to prove it. All four walls of a patient room are covered with keepsakes from around the globe.

Age: 53

Title: Emporiatrician, Baton Rouge Clinic

Hometown: Covington, Ky.

Depending on the destination, travelers may require up to six vaccines, but Rolfsen prefers not to administer more than two at a time to avoid adverse reactions. When someone tells him they are leaving tomorrow for Ghana, there is little he can do. Most vaccines take 10 days to prove affective, but still he gets those 11th hour calls.

“It’s a good little break to talk to people going on nice trips rather than those who are in pain,” Rolfsen says. “No one else was doing it. It was an unfilled void. It’s different and a lot of fun.”

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