Frank Wilson Harlow was educated at the University of Durham where he graduated MB BS in 1914, and he also studied in Vienna. Immediately after he qualified he joined the army and served as a Captain RAMC from 1914 throughout the first world war and retired in 1922. He subsequently specialized in surgery, obtaining the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1925 and settling in Ryde in the Isle of Wight where he was consultant surgeon in the Isle of Wight Hospital Group, and Surgeon to Parkhurst Prison. Harlow was the author of *An atlas of surgery*, published in 1958, and the editor of *Modern surgery for nurses*. When he retired from surgical practice he went to live at Ramsey in the Isle of Man.