Willem Thomas de Vogel
Dutch East Indies public health official
Willem Thomas de Vogel (26 March 1863 – 10 March 1955) was a colonial Dutch doctor and official who established the Department of Public Health in the Dutch East Indies.
Life
Early life
Willem Thomas de Vogel was born on 26 March 1863 in Toeban (now Tuban), Lasem (now Rembang), on Java in the Dutch East Indies. His father Henri Adrien Frédéric de Vogel (24 January 1825 – 17 August 1897) was Dutch but his mother Augusta Mary Stavers de Vogel (16 December 1840 – 4 January 1915) English; his sisters were Frances Maria Wilhelmina de Vogel Monod de Froideville (26 December 1859 – 4 March 1904), Frédérique Jeanne Louise de Vogel Einthoven (7 September 1861 –31 January 1937), Augusta Henriette de Vogel (20 January 1866 – 8 December 1959), Rosetta Catherina Albertine de Vogel (16 January 1868 – 19 January 1949), and Catherine Elisabeth de Vogel Julius Roelants (4 July 1871 – 28 June 1959). He received his primary education from private tutors but went to Arnhem in the Netherlands for gymnasium. He began university at Leiden in 1883, majoring in mathematics and physics, but in late 1884 his father lost his fortune, causing De Vogel to drop out of school. Instead, he worked on Nicholaas Beets, a sailing ship running between the Netherlands and Batavia (now Jakarta). His family considered this work to be beneath him, and he began running a cinchona plantation to produce quinine under the guidance of a Mr. Eekhout. He returned to study medicine in Leiden from 1886–1892 thanks to financial assistance from his cousin and brother-in-law Willem Einthoven; he graduated with honors on 19 January 1893, turning in a thesis focused on Einthoven's pioneering use of electrocardiograms to diagnose and treat heart conditions.
Medical career
Leaving for the East Indies two days after graduating, he worked as a local physician at the sugar plantations in Tegal on Java from 1893 to November 1895, overseeing early smallpox vaccination efforts there.
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