Born on 18 August 1896 at Windsor, Nova Scotia, son of Aaron Grindon Blauvelt, a manufacturer, and his wife Margaret Chisholm. He was in San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake and fire of 1906, but returned safe to Nova Scotia, and was educated at Dalhousie University. As a medical student he took part in treatment of the disabled during the Halifax disaster, when a French munitions ship blew up in 1917. On qualification in 1918 he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps, serving until 1920. From then till 1924 he was in general practice at Lockeport, Nova Scotia. He came to England in 1924, took the Conjoint qualification in 1927 and the Fellowship in 1930, and was appointed to the surgical staff of the North Middlesex Hospital, Edmonton. For a short time about 1935-36 he was assistant surgeon at North Ormesby Hospital, Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, but returned to the North Middlesex, later transferring to Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield, where he became senior surgeon. During the second world war he served in London throughout the air-raids - the third major emergency which he experienced. Blauvelt was a skilful surgeon of sound judgement, and a successful teacher of graduate students. He helped to develop the highest standards in the municipal hospital service. His observation of subcutaneous fat necrosis in acute pancreatitis was named "Blauvelt's sign". He married in 1934 Marjory Douglas Macdonald MA, daughter of Dr D D Macdonald of Kilmichael, Drumnadrochit, Inverness; two of her three brothers were medical men. He retired in 1961 to Drumnadrochit, but continued for a time to practise surgery in the Highlands and Islands medical service. He enjoyed fishing, but his chief recreations were wood-carving and the restoration of old furniture. He died at Kilmichael on 4 August 1967, shortly before his seventy-first birthday; his wife had died a month before him on 1 July. They were survived by their children, Euan Chisholm Blauvelt and Mrs Jenifer Anne Durlacher. Publication: Osteitis pubis with sequestre. *Brit J Urol* 1955, 27, 145-7.