Born 17 September 1879 at Sydney, New South Wales, the eldest son of Eben MacDonald, banker, and his wife Elizabeth Gray. He was educated privately and at St John's College, Cambridge, taking second-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, part 1, 1902. He then entered St Thomas's Hospital, where he served as house surgeon, and was senior house surgeon at St Peter's Hospital for Stone and Urinary Diseases. He was appointed surgical registrar at the West London Hospital in 1912, and assistant surgeon in the genito-urinary department in 1915. He thus came under the inspiration of Sir John Thomson-Walker and of John G Pardoe. During the first world war MacDonald served in France in 1915, and as surgeon to King George V Hospital, Ilford, Essex 1915-17, being promoted captain, RAMC, on 1 September 1917. He became genito-urinary surgeon at the West London Hospital in 1920, and was elected consulting surgeon on retirement in 1939. He was also genito-urinary surgeon to the Chelsea Hospital for Women and to the Royal Masonic Hospital, for he was a keen freemason. MacDonald served as president of the section of urology at the Royal Society of Medicine 1930-31, and was a member of the International Association of Urology. He was a treasurer of the Society for the Study of Venereal Diseases. He married in 1919 Mary (May) Martineau, third daughter of Major-General F H B Marsh, Bengal Infantry, who survived him with a daughter. They lived at Edghill, Wadhurst, Sussex, and he practised at 1 Welbeck House, WI. MacDonald died in the private wing of University College Hospital on 20 February 1946, aged 65, and his funeral was held at Stonegate Church, Sussex. His recreations were shooting and, golf; he was a member of the Royal Wimbledon Golf Club and of the Royal and Ancient at St Andrews. In early middle life he was stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant in a dark London street, but the penetrating wound healed without complications. Publications:- Diseases of the bladder, in A Latham and T C English *A system of treatment*, London, 1912. Affections of the urinary tract, in J S Fairbairn *The practitioner's encyclopaedia of midwifery and the diseases of women* London, 1921, pp 708-719. Diseases of kidney; bladder; ureter; prostate and vesicles. Chapters 47-50, in Sir A J Walton *A textbook of surgical diagnosis* London, 1928, 2, 947-1028.