Born at Edinburgh, the son of General Archibald Playfair, and a cousin of William Smoult Playfair, MD, LLD (1835-1903), Obstetric Surgeon to King's College Hospital, who was one of the first obstetricians in this country to insist upon doing the abdominal operations in his own wards instead of delegating them to a general surgeon as was then the custom. Hugh Playfair was educated at Fettes College and at King's College, London, where he was a dresser for Lord Lister in the old buildings of the hospital in Clare Market. He determined at an early period in his career as a medical student to devote his life to midwifery, and filled in succession the offices of Resident Accoucheur, Obstetric Tutor, Assistant Obstetric Physician (1904) and Lecturer on Practical Obstetrics at King's College Hospital, becoming in due course Obstetric and Gynaecological Surgeon, and Consulting Surgeon in 1926. For some years, too, he was Assistant Physician to the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children and Gynaecological Surgeon to the Metropolitan Hospital. He married in Paris in 1905 Miss Eva Journault, but as he had no children he adopted the son of his younger brother, Nigel Playfair, a well-known actor. He died March 25th, 1928.