Born Johannesburg, April 21, 1918. Died Potchefstroom, July 7, 2008, aged 90.
A medical student and doctor in pre-war and wartime Britain, Henry Lewis returned to his native South Africa, where he was later honoured with life membership by the Medical Association of South Africa.
The son of immigrants from Denmark, he was brought up from the age of eight in Potchefstroom, a small town 70 miles south west of his birthplace, Johannesburg. His father, Morris, opened a successful pharmacy in the busy rural town, where some 120 Jewish families settled.
From school in Cape Town, Henry gained a place at London Hospital Medical School. He spent his first year at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg. His mother, Sylvia, thought him too young at 16 to travel so far.
He then set out for a six-month classical music appreciation course in Berlin and Vienna, unaware of the Nazi presence in mid-1930s Germany and Austria. The threatening antisemitic atmosphere and brutality affected him deeply. Moving on, as planned, to London, he qualified in 1942 and spent the Second World War attending to victims of the London blitz. When war ended, he went to Edinburgh, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1947.
En route to a new hospital post in the US in Baltimore, he first made a detour to see his brother, Roy, and widowed mother - his father having died suddenly in 1946. The community gave him a celebratory kiddush, where he met his wife, Reggie Lewin.
Marrying in 1948, he settled in his home town and soon became resident surgeon at Potchefstroom General Hospital. His bi-weekly clinic, dispensing free medical treatment to local citizens, regardless of race, colour or creed, attracted patients from miles around.
He became an important local figure, active as a school governor and Rotarian. He sang in synagogue choir, played bridge and loved arts and music. In 1954 he was a founder member of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, the body concerned with the quality of medical care.
After his wife's early death from cancer in 1982, he increased his work load, holding his clinic three times a week. In 1988 he married a widow, Irene Patlansky, whose husband, Jack, a close friend, had fought as a volunteer in Israel's 1948 War of Independence. He retired from surgery in 1994, aged 76, but continued training new recruits.
He is survived by three sons from his first marriage - one of them, Stuart, the long-serving managing director of Peltours travel company in England - his second wife and her family, and six grandchildren.