THIRTY YEARS AWAY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 31, 6 February 1935, Page 12

THIRTY YEARS AWAY

"PRODIGAL SON'S" RETURN

PROFESSOR FROM ENGLAND

One of the reasons for the return to New Zealand of Professor E. A..Seagar is to enable him to see his. mother, aged 85, who lives in Auckland. '■'■ Professor Seagar, accompanied by Mrs. Seagar, arrived by the Tainui from England yesterday afternoon. ; -He has been away from the .-Dominion ' for thirty years, and declared to a "Post" reporter that he was "only a prodigal son returning."

Professor Seagar's father, Mr. Edward Seagar, had an engineering works in- Wellington. The son left Wellington to study medicine at Edinburgh, and after qualifying he held hospital posts in London. He went to the war with the R.M.C., and after that he was with the Siamese Government at Bangkok, having been appointed surgeon at the central hospital there. Conditions were fairly primitive there in those days, but considerable development has taken place since then. Professor Seagar later went to America under the Rockefeller Foundation and worked in various hospitals and laboratories in the United States. Then he was appointed to the Rockefeller Chair of Tropical Diseases at the Im- | perial. College, Trinidad. After having held that position for about seven years he became chief medical officer of the Barbados Colonial Office. Ultimately he returned to. London, where ihe has been for the past three years ; and where he has been doing research work on virus diseases. ■

Referring to the many deaths in Ceylon recently from malaria, Professor Seagar said that when he was in Trinidad there was a similar outbreak in the Barbados. In a place which had not been affected previously malaria swept through like a prairie fire. ' ' - '. '•'.'..'

Much of Professor Seagar's work while he was in Bangkok had to do with diseases. ■