May 25, 2010

In Memoriam: Henry Seidel, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to report, with great sadness, the March 24 death of Henry Seidel, professor emeritus of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a beloved pediatrician and a brilliant and influential educator who shepherded generations of medical students through their training here.

Henry became a member of the School of Medicine faculty in 1950 and an attending pediatrician at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1953, spending virtually his entire professional career with us. Acclaimed as a pediatrician’s pediatrician, he continued to see patients and teach students for almost 20 years after formally retiring in 1990 at the age of 68. In his nearly seven decades at Hopkins, Henry became an indispensable force in the institution, revered by fellow pediatricians and adored by students, many of whom sought his professional wisdom and personal advice long after they had become physicians and faculty members themselves.

During his 13 years—1977 to 1990—as dean of student affairs, he guided future physicians through the labyrinth of their medical education and not a few personal crises with quiet calm and remarkable wisdom and sensitivity. Henry believed that a physician’s mission was not only to treat the sick but also to better the system that sometimes failed those who needed it the most. An unwavering humanist, he counseled that empathy is at least as important a skill for a doctor as clinical expertise and scientific knowledge.

A lifelong and ardent champion of children’s rights, he marshaled colleagues in efforts to educate lawyers, judges and legislators about weaknesses in laws and programs designed to protect them. He was an expert on the special needs of adopted children and their parents and, in the 1970s, sat on the American Academy of Pediatrics task force for the care and evaluation of the thousands of Vietnamese orphans.

Henry was an author or co-author of more than 70 papers and numerous books, including the now-classic text in pediatrics Principles of Pediatrics: Health Care of the Young. To read more about his contributions to medicine and to Johns Hopkins, please visit www.hopkinschildrens.org/henry-seidel-obituary.aspx.

I know you join me in extending sincere condolences to Henry’s wife, May Ruth, and to his three sons, Robert, Stuart and Steven.

Sincerely,

Edward D. Miller, M.D.
CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine
Dean of the Medical Faculty