Dr. H. Seidelin

Abstract

DR. HARALD SEIDELIN, who died at Antwerp on April 29, was born at Aarhus (Denmark) in 1878, and studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen. In 1904 he went to Mexico, and became professor of pathology and bacteriology in the University of Yucatan, where his work was mainly concerned with investigations into the cause of yellow fever. He returned to Europe in 1910, and the following year joined the staff of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as scientific secretary to the Yellow Fever Bureau. He took part in expeditions of the School to Yucatan and Jamaica to study yellow fever, vomiting sickness, and other obscure tropical diseases, and in 1912 he described certain minute bodies, found in the erythrocytes of yellow fever cases, which he believed to be the causative agent of yellow fever. He gave them the name, Paraplasma flavigenum, but his view of the parasitic origin of yellow fever was finally refuted in 1914 by Wenyon and Low. The last seventeen years of Dr. Seidelin's life were devoted to the organisation and development of the medical service of the S.A. des Huileries du Congo Beige (Lever Brothers). Under his able and energetic leadership this service rose to a high state of efficiency, and he was honoured by the Belgian Government in 1929 with the decoration of Chevalier de I'Ordre Royal du Lion. Seidelin was a hard worker, a capable administrator, a careful investigator, and a brilliant linguist, speaking fluently half a dozen languages.