Dr Navl Pestonji Karanjia, 88, was a patrician figure in the territory's shrinking Parsee community (population less than 150) who at the turn of the century followed the British flag to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong.
To a generation of old South China Morning Post hands during the paper's billet at Wyndham Street, Dr Karanjia was the company doctor who kept a sharp eye on the health of the staff.
Beside the annual checkup and routine of vaccinations and inoculations against small-pox and cholera, Dr Karanjia's principal concern in the 1950s and 1960s was tuberculosis, then the No 1 killer.
Those were the days of the hot-metal press, when production workers inhaled lead and zinc fumes from linotype machines and casting ovens.
The merest hint of coughing or sickness-induced absenteeism had the worker marched to Dr Karanjia's clinic at Wong Nai Chung Road in Happy Valley.
If the diagnosis proved positive, the worker was admitted to the Ruttonjee Sanatorium or Grantham Hospital for treatment until recovery on full pay.