Sidney Herbert Watkins (1912–1993)

The passing of Joshua Leibowitz on 10 July 1993 closed a long and distinguished chapter in the history of medicine. His particular blend of medical, linguistic and historical scholarship was representative of that Baltic-Jewish tradition of learning which contributed so much to European culture before its dispersal and decimation by the Nazi horror. He will be widely mourned by the history of medicine community. His particular association with the Wellcome Institute was close and affectionate. He and his wife Hannah spent a number of extended study periods in London during the 1960s and 70s and became keenly interested in the development of the Institute and its Library. At the opening of the then new Oriental Reading Room he characteristically insisted on intoning some appropriate verses from the Hebrew scriptures "to get it off to a good start". Never the austere "Herr Professor Doktor" but always instinctively a teacher, he endeared himself to staff by his willingness to discuss and debate all manner of historical and cultural topics. His learning inspired awe, and his complete lack of academic condescension, affection. He was born in 1895 in Vilna (now Vilnius, but at that period part of Russia), but spent his school years in Riga. In 1913 he began his medical studies at the University of Heidelberg, but these were soon interrupted by the world war. Internment followed, but his wider studies continued, particularly in the Hebrew language. In 1918 he was able to resume medical studies, receiving his MD degree in 1922. Medical training at Heidelberg was made to accommodate courses on philosophy and the history of art as well as rabbinical learning. Joshua Leibowitz's medical interests ranged through internal medicine, psychiatry and, particularly, neurology. His years as Director of the Jewish Sanatorium in Bad-Homberg brought him into fruitful contact with the intellectual riches of the then flourishing Jewish community of Frankfurt-am-Main, where he taught Hebrew literature and Jewish thought at the Judisches Lehrhaus. He was already accumulating interests and book collections in the history of medicine: building a choice rare book library which was to travel with him to Palestine in 1935. He was co-founder of the Israel Society for the History of Medicine and Science in 1947 and of the journal Koroth in 1952. In 1957 he began the first formal course of instruction in the history of medicine at the Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School. As a pillar of …