Elmhirst-Baxter was born on 18 December 1915 and was educated at Wellington College and St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he won the Wix prize in 1938 for his essay on David Pitcairn. He qualified in 1939, and dropped his second surname by public advertisement. During the war of 1939-45 he served in the RAMC, in the Near East and in Burma. After the war he continued to serve in the Territorials, was promoted to the rank of Major in 1947, and was awarded the Territorial Efficiency Decoration in 1951. He was surgical registrar at the Postgraduate Medical School (Hammersmith Hospital), and the Central Middlesex Hospital, and senior surgical registrar at Hampstead General Hospital (1951) and the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital from 1952. From 1955 he served as honorary secretary of the East Anglian Region Registrars Group. Failing to obtain a consultant post at home he migrated in 1956 to Bermuda, where he began to build up an excellent practice. He died in Bermuda on 1 August 1957 aged 41, survived by his wife and five children. Elmhirst was a confident and dexterous surgeon, with great personal charm and marked artistic gifts. He collected Tudor portraits, and was sufficiently well-known for his researches in heraldry to be offered a position as herald-extraordinary at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He was also a keen entomologist, and while at Ipswich studied the effects of irradiation on the genetics of the cabbage-white butterfly. He wrote an amusing style and a beautiful handwriting. Publications : David Pitcairn. *St Bart's Hosp Rep* 1939, 72, 278-302. *Battle First-Aid* 1942. Irradiation of butterflies. *Lancet* 1955, 1, 1183. The way out [lack of opportunity for young surgeons in England] *Brit med J* 1957, 1, Supplement p 42.