David Wilkie qualified in medicine in Edinburgh in 1926 and held early appointments in that city. His brother John Leonard Wilkie was an ophthalmologist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. At the end of the second world war he moved to Cheshire and took up an appointment at the Clatterbridge General Hospital in Bebington. When he retired he held the post of surgeon superintendent at Clatterbridge. He died on 23 February 1985 survived by his wife who died sometime in 1987.