Leipoldt was a man of great ability and versatility, who worked actively as a doctor and a journalist throughout his career. A South African of Dutch republican sympathies, in later life he promoted good professional relations between the Medical Associations of South Africa and Great Britain. Fully bilingual in Afrikaans and English, he made his mark as a poet in both languages. Born in 1880 at Clanwilliam, Cape Province, the son and grandson of missionaries, he was educated by his father. He won a prize for an essay in the *Boy's Own Paper*, and contributed while still a boy to the *Cape Times*. Before he was twenty he had joined the staff of the *South African News* and was correspondent of various European papers which favoured the Boer cause. He came to Europe in 1902 and paid for his roving travels by free-lance journalism. Coming to London and feeling the need of a less precarious profession he entered Guy's Hospital Medical School. He qualified in 1907, winning gold medals in surgery and medicine, and then studied children's diseases at Berlin and Graz. Coming back to London he was appointed anaesthetist to the German Hospital in 1909, took the Fellowship that summer, and edited *The Hospital*. He went to America for further postgraduate study, and after an illness recuperated by a journey through the East Indies in 1911. Back in London by 1912 he gained valuable experience as Medical Inspector of Schools at Hampstead under James Kerr, MD. Early in 1914 he obtained a post as the first Medical Inspector of Schools in the Transvaal, and found that the proper scope of the work had not been considered by the appointers. As he has recorded in his book *Bushveld Doctor*, they had intended him merely to visit schools from time to time for superficial inspection of their general condition; no provision had been even thought of for positive care of the children's health. Leipoldt was successful in promoting the necessary improvements. During the war he served as a surgeon on General Botha's staff, and in 1919 was appointed Medical Inspector of Schools in Cape Province. He joined the editorial staff of the Pretoria newspaper *Die Volkstem* in 1923, but soon afterwards resumed practice as a consultant on children's diseases at Cape Town. He was appointed organising secretary of the Medical Association of South Africa, and with W Darley-Hartley produced the first number of its *Journal* in January 1927. This journal, which subsequently (1917) became the bilingual *South African Medical Journal*, was a combination of the *Medical Journal of South Africa* and the *South African Medical Record*; and the new Medical Association was a combi¬nation of the old independent Association with the Federal Council of the various local branches of the British Medical Association in the South African Union. Leipoldt successfully carried out this work of reconciliation and co-ordination under the influence of Dr Alfred Cox, Secretary of the BMA; in 1928 he represented South Africa at the Association's Cardiff meeting. When he retired in 1944 Leopoldt left the arrangements ready for the final separation of the direct links between London and the individual branches, and the affiliation of the South African Association to the BMA as a single body. Besides his medical work, both clinical and professional, and his writing as a journalist and a poet, Leipoldt made his mark as a botanist and an ornithologist. His early Afrikaans poetry was rebellious and passionately tragic and made a deep appeal in South Africa; his later English poems were more mellow and profound. He also wrote a life of *Jan van Riebeeck*, commander of the first white settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, published in 1936. He cultivated his naturally refined taste for food and wine, and was a notably good cook. He proclaimed that wine was far more beneficial than milk, which he looked on as a dangerous vehicle for disease. Leipoldt died at the Cape on 14 April 1947, aged 67.