W. Henry Sebrell, director of the National Institutes of Health from 1950 to 1955, died September 29 at his home in Pompano Beach, Fla. He was 91 years old.
During Sebrell's tenure, NIH created its $64 million, 500-bed clinical center in Bethesda, Md. Sebrell's research centered on nutrition and vitamins; he published nearly 300 papers. In the 1930s he helped discover the cure for pellagra, a fatal disease caused by a niacin deficiency.
Sebrell earned his M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1925, after which he spent more than 30 years with the United States Public Health Service and NIH. He served as assistant surgeon general for USPHS in 1950.
David T. Purtilo, discoverer of a fatal genetic immunodeficiency disease, died September 28 in Naples, Fla. He was 53 years old.
Purtilo, chairman of the pathology-microbiology department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, discovered...
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