In tribute: Prof. Dr. Joseph Vincent De Sa, Bombay, India.

Prof. Dr. Joseph Vincent De Sa, whom we called Prof. Joe De Sa, was born on August 21,1915, in Bombay, India, where he also died on November 3, 1989 (15 years ago). To us within the international community of neurootologists and to all his friends, students , and contemporaneous ear, nose, and throat CENT) specialists in India, he was a very great communicator in the fields of both otology and neurootology . Fifteen years after his passing, we still recognize that we have lost an unforgettable clinical investigator, ear surgeon , lecturer , teacher, and-especially-great man of modern medicine at home and abroad . I first met Dr. De Sa in Madrid in 1973, where he participated in an international otolaryngological congress with an important branch into neurootology. When he approached me, he showed himself to be an inquisitive man very much concerned about all his giddy and dizzy patients. He regularly had to meet them in his clinic at De Sa's Hospital in Chowpatty , Bombay , India. Then we sat together, and he reported in his very friendly, talkative, and attractive manner that he had specialized in medicine in India. During World War II (between 1943 and 1946), he had gone to the United States for a postgraduate training course at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the otolaryngology department under Dr. J.e. Crowe and Dr. Stacey R . Guild. He was grateful for his learning period there. He also underwent postgraduate training in bronchoesophagology at Temple University Medical School under Dr. Chevalier Jackson . Thereafter, in December 1946, he received postgraduate qualification in ENT studies at D.L.O. (London). After returning to Bombay, where his father already was practicing as a well-known medical doctor and gynecologist, De Sa served between 1947 and 1954 as an honorary surgeon at the King Edward Memorial Hospital and, after that, as an assistant honorary professor of ENT at Seth G.S . Medical College. Between 1954 and 1973, he occupied the positions of honorary ENT surgeon and chairman of the ENT department of King Edward Memorial Hospital and served as an honorary professor of ENT at the Seth G .S. Medical College, positions from which he retired in 1973. Owing to his excellent reputation , he was offered many more positions within the medical community in India , especially in Bombay. Consequently, he worked in Bombay as honorary ENT surgeon at the Petit Parsee General Hospital until 1985; as honorary ENT surgeon at the R.P.T.B. Hospital , Sewri , until 1952; as honorary ENT consultant at the Central Railway Hospital until 1970; as honorary ENT consultant at I.N.H.S. "ASEINI" Hospital until 1969; as honorary ENT consultant at the Western Railway Hospital until 1970; as ENT advisor to the Armed Forces Medical Services of India until 1980; and as honorary ENT consultant at Jaslok Hospital and Research Center until 1986. As a delegate from India, he attended several world congresses of otolaryngology: in Paris , Venice , Madrid, Mexico City, and Washington, De. He also participated in other international congresses, such as the meeting of the Societies Iberio Americano Symposium on Neurosurgery in Otorhinolaryngology; the South East Asia Conference of Otolaryngological Societies; the first, second, and third International Symposium on Microsurgery in Otorhinolaryngology; the fifth National Latin American Symposium in Madrid; the third International Symposium on Facial Paralysis, Zurich; a workshop in otosclerosis conducted by Prof. Schuknecht at Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit; a roundtable conference on otosclerosis in Cuba; workshops in cochlear implants in Bombay; and a Spanish-American symposium on neurootology in Barcelona. All these activities demonstrate the degree to which Prof. Joe De Sa was involved in the roaring growth of new technologies, abilities , and clinicomedical theories about the specialty of otology and in the growth of its youngest offspring, neurootology . This remarkable list of his activities in India and abroad confirms for us that he belonged to the world's best in his field . Above all , his open-mindedness gave him easy access to all that he wanted and needed to know. As a professor of ENT at Bombay University, Dr. De Sa carried out special reconstructive surgical tech-