[Hoogendoorn and the medical registry]

Dirk Hoogendoorn (1914-1990) was a solo general practitioner in the village of Wijhe (eastern part of the Netherlands) from 1941, during the time of the German occupation, until 1971. From the very beginning, he combined his practice with the recording of disease patterns. He first concentrated on infectious diseases, especially whooping cough, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis. He later set up registries in two regional hospitals. When his initiative expanded to a national organisation, he became its advisor. He nonetheless continued to produce statistics on a variety of disorders as well as on surgical procedures, even more so after his retirement. The subjects ranged from traffic accidents and tonsillectomies to the discrepancy between increased body height and the unchanging height of the tennis net, but he had the most affinity with the practice of obstetrics. He stirred up much emotion by showing that a decrease in perinatal mortality was proceeding slower in the Netherlands than in other European countries, especially by suggesting a causal relationship between this lag and the high rate of Dutch home deliveries. This debate has continued to this day.