Born 28 November 1862, the son of a farmer at Watermael, Beitsfort, Brussels, and his wife Elizabeth Labarre. He was educated at the University of Brussels, where he took the degree of doctor of natural science in 1885. In 1887 he won the Seutin prize of the Royal Society of Medical and Natural Sciences of Brussels. On 21 June 1890 he graduated docteur agrege with a thesis *L'étude de la tuberculose osseuse*. In 1891 he was advanced to the post of professor of clinical surgery, becoming professor extraordinary in 1909, and professeur ordinaire de pathologie externe générale et spéciale in 1914; he held the two chairs concurrently. In December 1912, during the Balkan war, he acted as head of a field ambulance with the rank of colonel in the Belgian army. The ambulance did excellent work, and Depage was thus educated for the duties he was afterwards called upon to perform when Belgium was overwhelmed by the German invasion in 1914. During the whole of the world war he occupied the post of surgeon-in-chief at the Red Cross Ocean Ambulance at La Panne in Belgium, which received the majority of the very seriously wounded because it was the base hospital nearest to the front line. The work was of a serious and exhausting character, but Depage carried it through with characteristic energy and thoroughness, and in 20,000 cases had a mortality of only five per cent. He married on 8 August 1893 Marie, daughter of Desiré Emile Picard, a civil engineer. She bore him four children, two of whom survived him, one son being a member of the medical profession. Madame Depage, a very charming lady, by her social qualities more than made up for the severe and somewhat forbidding aspect of her husband. She was drowned in the *Lusitania* on her return from the United States, where she had been successfully appealing for funds for the relief of the Belgian wounded. She was buried temporarily in the south of Ireland, and her body was afterwards transferred to La Panne. Depage was a man of abounding energy. Before the war he established a private hospital in Brussels, and attached to it the first Belgian school for the instruction of nurses. He introduced Nurse Cavell from the London Hospital to teach English methods; her summary execution during the war brought lasting dishonour on the German authorities. Throughout his later life Depage was active in promoting the interests of the Belgian Red Cross, of which he was president. He was also secretary of the International League of Red Cross Associations. In 1893 he was a founder of the Belgian Society of Surgery, being secretary at first and afterwards president. In 1902 he was a leading spirit in establishing the Société internationale de Chirurgie, which at first met triennially in Brussels; he acted for many years as secretary-general and was president from 1919 to 1921. The International Society has subsequently met biennially in different countries. He died at the Hague from cancer of the large intestine on 10 June 1925.