Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and at Addenbrooke's and St Thomas's Hospitals. He graduated BA at Cambridge after he had been placed in the second class of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1872, and then entered St Thomas's Hospital, where he acted as resident accoucheur and house physician in 1877. He took part in the Turco- Russian war as a surgeon, and upon his return to England was appointed the first resident medical officer at the St Thomas's Home for paying patients. In July 1898 he was elected surgeon to out-patients at the Evelina Hospital for Children and resigned the post in 1903. In 1901 he was appointed surgeon to the Prince of Wales' General Hospital at Tottenham and held office until 1910 when he was appointed consulting surgeon. During these nine years he was the representative of the medical staff on the Board of Management and remained as a governor after his retirement. He presented the hospital with an X-ray equipment when radiography was still in its infancy. He died unmarried at Worthing on 23 September 1930. Being relieved of the necessity of earning a living by the practice of surgery, for he inherited a competence from an uncle, and being also of a retiring disposition Edmunds devoted his life to experimental research in surgical pathology. His first essay in 1885 began in the pathological laboratory at the University of Leipzig, then under the control of Professor Birch Hirschfeld where, collaborating with Charles Ballance and aided by the advice of Dr Hueber, a series of experiments were carried out to ascertain the best method of ligaturing the large arteries in their continuity under the newly-introduced Listerian methods. The first results were published in 1886 in a paper read before the Royal Medico-chirurgical Society, but the experiments were continued under Victor Horsley at the Brown Institute and in the pathological laboratory at St Thomas's Hospital under Charles Sherrington until the final results appeared in a classical work issued in 1891 entitled A treatise on the ligature of the great arteries in continuity; the conclusion arrived at being that, in opposition to the teaching of previous surgeons, a large artery should be tied with a round absorbable ligature without injury to its walls. Edmunds then turned his attention to the thyroid and, again working at the Brown Institute in the Wandsworth Road, was amongst the first to produce myxoedema experimentally in a monkey by extirpation of the gland. He also proved that it was possible to save dogs from the immediate effects of complete removal of the thyroid and parathyroids by the liberal use of milk and the injection of calcium salts. In connexion with the thyroid experiments he at one time kept a herd of goats which had been deprived of the thyroid gland, and the milk from these goats was sent daily to St Thomas's Hospital for the use of patients suffering from exophthalmic goitre. The goats were kept on a farm in Sussex belonging to William Arthur Brailey, then ophthalmic surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital. Edmunds was always a steady supporter of the Invalid Children's Aid Association. He took much trouble in selecting sites for the homes of children suffering from rheumatic disease of the heart, and established a convalescent home for them at Worthing. Apart from surgery he was much interested in music and had made a fine collection of gramophone records; he was also well-known as an amateur in colour photography and as freemason he was Worshipful Master of the King's College Lodge No 2993. Publications:- Ligation of the great arteries in continuity, with C A Ballance. *Med-chir Trans*. 1886, 69, 443. *A treatise on the ligature of the great arteries in continuity with observations on the nature, progress and treatment of aneurism*, with C A Ballance. London, 1891. 568 pp. Experiments on the thyroid and parathyroid glands. *Proc Physiol Soc*. 1895, p xxx. Observations and experiments on the pathology of Graves' disease. *J Path Bact*. 1896, 3, 488. *The Erasmus Wilson lectures on the pathology and diseases of the thyroid gland*. Edinburgh, 1901. *Sound and rhythm*. London, 1906. *Exophthalmic goitre*. London, 1921; 2nd edition, 1922.