Sieur, Celestin

Colonel Marcel Sieur, medical officer, donated photographs and obituaries relating to his father to The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1957.

His father was General Inspecteur Célestin Sieur, medical officer, who was born in Charente, France, the son of a peasant farmer. He was educated at the School of Medicine, Bordeaux, and entered the Military Academy at Lyon in 1881. He later specialised in ENT. In 1914 he was chief medical officer of Val-de-Grace and, on the outbreak of the First World War he entered the army medical corps where he made vaccination against typhus obligatory. In 1916, with the Director of Health Services of the military government in Paris, he reorganised the Parisian hospital service. In 1919 he was nominated to the presidency of the Consultative Committee of Health and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Sieur was elected to the Academy of Medicine in 1918 and became its President in 1939. He was noted for his work on the anatomy of the face and the treatment of tetanus. He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour in 1954.

From the guide to the Sieur, Celestin (1860-1955), 1954-1955, (The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh)