David Steel Chapman was a consultant surgeon at Ashington Hospital and a former professor of surgery at Natal University, South Africa. He was born in Choppington, Northumberland, in 1919. He qualified from Durham in 1942 and won the Hallet prize. Joining the Army in 1943, he was with the British raiding forces in the Dodecanese, received airborne training, and was dropped into Macedonia behind the German lines. He observed the last convoy of Germans leaving Greece. Posted to the Far East to train for operations behind the Japanese lines, he developed amoebic dysentery and was invalided out of the service. He resumed his surgical training in Newcastle, and moved to Teesside in 1951. He was then invited to Natal University, as a professor of surgery. He did pioneer work on spina bifida, but resigned his position because of his opposition to apartheid. For a time he worked in Zululand, advising Chief Buthelezi on improving his hospital service, and then returned to Britain as consultant surgeon at Ashington Hospital in 1975. By then he was a world authority on snake bite, and was asked to write the section on its treatment in *Pye's surgical handicraft*. He was predeceased by his wife Mary, and left two daughters and a son. He died on 30 June 1997.