Born in Dendermonde on 24 January 1903, Oswald Van Lantschoot, after accumulating great and highest distinctions during his studies, obtained in Louvain, in 1927, the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Surgery and Childbirth. After one year as assistant in the service of Professor G. Debaisieux, he perfected his surgical skills during four years in the famous Bruges school.

In 1932, he moved to Namur. His competence and dynamism immediately ensured him brilliant success. The young Flemish man from Dendermonde became a true Namurian — adopted by the city, and active at every level: president of the local Rotary Club, twice elected president of the Council of the Order of Physicians of the province of Namur, and later its delegate to the Superior Council.

A great traveller, he attended surgical congresses and visited foreign centres, always on the lookout for new techniques. His service became a veritable school. He was as demanding for his assistants as he was for himself.

When the University of Louvain decided in 1958 to decentralise the teaching of the fourth doctorate in medicine by creating the regional centres known as CREMEC, it was Doctor Van Lantschoot who was asked to assume the presidency of the CREMEC of Namur. He did so until his death — creating a library, awakening enthusiasms, and supporting the centre widely, both personally and financially. In 1965, the University recognised his merits by appointing him as a lecturer.

A heart attack only temporarily slowed him down. Soon he was seen again with the same enthusiasm in the operating room. Beneath his humour was a convinced Christian with a deep faith and a rigid moral sense — but that rigidity did not mean fanaticism: he remained open to ideas, and his contrasts were part of his strength: a gruff exterior, a heart of gold, and a gift for diplomacy.

The great trial came in 1962 — terrible for a surgeon: the amputation of a leg. Convalescence and re-education were long, yet he faced it, and his good mood did not seem altered.

His operation at the St. Joseph University Clinic in Herent strengthened ties with the faculty. It was thanks to his patronage that cardiovascular surgery under extracorporeal circulation could begin there from 1962. He offered the pumps of the first “artificial heart” used there — equipment still used in animal experiments leading to later successes in heart transplantation.

In the last years, reduced surgical activity paradoxically gave him new fulfilment: the surgeon torn from the operating room continued to serve — in Namur (CREMEC and hospital renewal plans), in Louvain (Association of Former Student Doctors), on the programming committee of the new Woluwé–St-Lambert clinic, and in Brussels at the Ministry of Public Health, where he chaired the Hospital Council. Death struck him while returning from one commission and travelling onward to another duty.

Through all this, he remained optimistic, smiling, hiding suffering and anxiety. If he held out, he owed much to his wife, his faithful companion and chauffeur. They were inseparable — and even death did not separate them.

At the funeral, sadness was softened by pride: an innumerable audience gathered — lodges of Louvain, Jesuits of Namur, professors from Brussels and Liège, leaders of the “Geneesheren Alumni”, bishops, civic authorities. Flemish turned Namurian, deeply Belgian at heart — he must have smiled.

F. Lavenne
Secretary General of the Association of Former Student Doctors from Leuven.

Source: Louvain Médical 86 (1967), pp. 593–595