Sidney Sewell was born in Melbourne, the son of Richard Blamire Sewell and his wife Emma. After completing his secondary education at Caulfield Grammar School he was a teacher in general subjects for two years at the Hamilton College in the Western District of Victoria. On the eve of his twenty-first birthday he commenced his medical course at the University of Melbourne and went into residence at Queen's College. In his final year he gained first-class honours in medicine, surgery and obstetrics and won the Beaney Scholarship in surgery. This success entitled him to become senior resident medical officer at the Melbourne Hospital for twelve months and at the end of that time he was acting medical superintendent for a short period. Following this, for several months, he lectured in pathology in the place of Professor Sir Harry Allen who was on sick leave.

In 1908 he left Melbourne for postgraduate studies in England and on the Continent. He worked for a year with Sir Victor Horsley at University College Hospital, attended clinics at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Queen Square, spent some time with Professor FW Mott at Claybury and saw the researches of Sir James Mackenzie. In Germany he worked at Wasserman's laboratory at the time of the introduction of the arsenical 606.

On his return to Melbourne he commenced practice in Collins Street and was assistant to Sir Richard Stawell for twelve months. He was appointed honorary neurologist to St Vincent's Hospital but resigned from that position a few months later to take up an appointment as physician to outpatients at the Melbourne Hospital. At this time he was invited by the senior members of the medical profession to give a series of postgraduate lectures on neurology at the Medical School of the University of Melbourne. These were an outstanding success and they demonstrated that he was a first-class lecturer and showed great knowledge and ability in expounding the recent work of Sherrington, Horsley, Head, Mott and others. His clear exposition of what was formerly regarded as a most difficult branch of medicine brought him at once into the forefront for consultative work. He acquired a very large practice and his consultative work took him to many states of Australia and to New Zealand. In 1911, during the absence of Professor WA Osborne, professor of physiology, University of Melbourne, in North America and Europe, Sewell was selected to give the lectures on the central nervous system to the third year medical students, which he did with great success.

During World War I he was refused overseas service because of a physical disability which he had for most of his life. His health was never good but despite this, he insisted upon working to his utmost. He was put in charge of the returned soldiers' shell-shock cases and in this work he had conspicuous success.
He next became interested in the early diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis and, in the pursuit of knowledge in this field, travelled in 1924 to the Brompton Hospital and visited numerous clinics in the United States of America including those at Rochester (Mayo), Boston and New York. He was one of the first to practise artificial pneumothorax as a method of treating pulmonary tuberculosis. His object was to establish a State Tuberculosis Service in Victoria, and this he did. Despite criticism and unpopularity, he persuaded the authorities to arrange financial help for sanatorium-treated patients.

With the same zeal he was the prime mover in 1930, with the help of Sir Richard Stawell, in founding the Association of Physicians of Australasia. He followed this with consultations with the council of the Royal College of Physicians, London which led to the foundation of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1938. He was vice-president of the College 1938-40, and president 1940-42. A full-size oil-portrait, in his robes of office, now hangs in the College. For his services to medicine he was knighted in 1945.

His appointments to the Royal Melbourne Hospital were those of physician to outpatients 1911-23 and physician to inpatients 1923-40. During World War II he was recalled as physician to inpatients for the period 1940-46 and it was during this period that I came under his influence. As a teacher of medicine he was authoritarian, but students hung upon his words. He liked to be dramatic and enjoyed telling the story of a consultation at which, just as he arrived, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest. `I rapidly filled a syringe with adrenaline, injected it into the heart muscle, and immediately the heart returned to sinus rhythm. The patient is still alive today but unfortunately during his short period of death, he suffered a unilateral thrombosis affecting the substantia nigra and he has been left with unilateral Parkinsonism'. Sir Sidney did not believe in therapeutic nihilism and his therapeutic devices included cupping, application of leeches and even rectal oxygen to a patient extremis from ulcerative colitis, because faecal culture grew an anaerobic streptococcus.

Sir Sidney was intellectually richly endowed and his talents included native cunning. In 1946 his house physician rang him and reported that after several attempts he had failed to obtain cerebrospinal fluid by lumbar puncture. The great man reassured the intern and said that he would perform a cisternal puncture himself. On reaching the bedside, accompanied by his staff and students, he was awe-stricken to see the patient was five feet tall, weighed fifteen stone and her head rested on her shoulders because of a short thick neck. At this critical moment it was by chance that I entered the ward. Sir Sidney spotted me and with an engaging smile said `Here is my medical registrar who is an expert in the art of cisternal puncture'. With great dignity he cast aside his gloves and allotted the task to me.

In 1908 he married Alice Maud, the sister of Joseph Cunning, a senior surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, London. They had two sons, both of whom graduated in medicine, and five daughters. One son, Sidney Arnold Sewell was a Fellow of our College. Lady Sewell was the instigator of the Annie B Cunning Memorial Lecture on nutrition.

No man reaches a position of eminence uncriticised by his fellows, and Sir Sidney was no exception. To go to his home at Berwick and feel its serene and gracious atmosphere, to wander with him through his garden of rare trees and plants and to gaze over the tranquil vale where his pedigree Guernsey cattle grazed, brought conviction that envy and calumny were unworthy. It was here that Sir Sidney died. Although he knew that death was fast approaching he continued working to the limit of his capability.