David Seward served the Geelong community as a physician from 1936 to
his retirement in 1988, broken only by six years' war service. He was
respected for his skills as an excellent physician, and was a widely
acknowledged expert in tuberculosis management. Seward's career and his
life reflected qualities of gentleness, compassion and integrity.

Free of vanity, he never hankered after social recognition and worldly
success.

David Norman Livingstone Seward was born in 1913 in Elsternwick.

His father, Norman, an optician, owned a business in optical and
scientific instruments and rare books in Bourke Street, Melbourne.

His mother, Effie, was a co-founder of Mentone Girls Grammar School. He
went to Caulfield Grammar School and studied medicine at the University
of Melbourne with his two sisters, Winsome and Ida, graduating in 1936.

His long attachment to Geelong began in 1936 with a hospital residency
of two years. After demobilisation from the navy, he entered general
practice in Belmont in 1946.

He and his partner were the only doctors south of the Barwon River and
serviced the growing suburbs of Belmont and Highton, to Barwon Heads,
Moriac and other outlying communities.

At the same time, he served as an honorary inpatient physician at
Geelong Hospital, being one of the only two physicians caring for public
patients. He retired from the hospital in 1979.

Seward's major interest was lung diseases and he left general practice
to specialise as a chest physician when tuberculosis was a major health
concern.

From 1947 to 1983 he was medical officer in charge of the Geelong Chest
Clinic, and supervisor of all TB sufferers in the south-west of Victoria
with as many as 50 inpatients in Geelong Hospital at any one time.

Great advances were being made in chemotherapy, dramatically improving
the outlook for people chronically infected with TB, while mass X-ray
screening of the community detected many infections in their early
stages, enabling more effective treatment and reducing the insidious
spread.

During this period the mortality from tuberculosis in Australia fell
from 28 deaths per 100,000 to five (1959) and one (1974).

In Proust's anthology, History of Tuberculosis in Australia (1991),
Seward warned against complacency now that the disease was being
controlled successfully. He advised Aboriginal health services to remain
vigilant, expressing concern about the possible spread of TB among AIDS
sufferers. "It is only with this constant awareness of tuberculosis that
control can be maintained," he wrote.

In 1937, Seward joined the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and served as
a naval officer from the declaration of war until late 1945. Most of
these years he spent at sea, near New Guinea and Borneo. His involvement
continued after the war with the Naval Reserve; he rose to the rank of
surgeon commander.

Seward's busy professional life left him little time for other community
service, but he was an active member of the Geelong Rotary Club for 44
years.

During the war years he married Janet Galbraith and throughout their 50
years of marriage she was an unfailing source of support and
companionship. After her death in 1991, he had three years of loneliness
but found happiness again with marriage to Jean Mockridge in 1993. Her
sudden death preceded his by only four days.

He is survived by his four children, Alan, Campbell, Anne and Hugh, and
12 grandchildren.