Born on December 17th, 1861, at Wilton, near Salisbury, the second son of Joel Douty, a well-known schoolmaster, whose address was Netherhampton House, and of Mary, daughter of J Donaldson, of Carlisle. He was educated at St Edmund's School, Salisbury, and at King's College, Cambridge, which he had entered as a Choral Scholar intended for Holy Orders. He graduated in Part I of the Natural Science Tripos in 1884. His father dying the day he took his BA, he went home to carry on the school, which he afterwards sold. In 1885 he returned to Cambridge and supported himself by coaching while reading medicine for a degree. During the next twelve years he worked incessantly and with restless activity, becoming Senior Demonstrator of Anatomy in 1887 and Supervisor of Medical Students at King's and Emmanuel Colleges. Indeed, it was said that at one time he was nearly elected a Fellow of King's with a view to his being made Dean. In 1889 he was House Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, having worked there in his vacations. Settling in practice at Cambridge with Hyde Hill, MRCS, he achieved great success in a short period. He had, indeed, already shown himself to be a very able teacher and had a large coaching connection. After a contested election, he became Assistant Surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital, as also Surgeon in charge of the Gynaecological Department there, and was appointed Lecturer in Midwifery at the University. He was elected to the Cambridge County Council, held a post in connection with the Cambridge District Nurses, and was Surgeon Captain in the Harwich Infantry Brigade. In 1890 he performed cholecystotomy, an unusual operation in East Anglia, and was supported at this operation by the presence of his senior, Sir George M Humphry, whom he resembled in his impressive manner and powers of teaching. In 1897, suffering from haemoptysis after influenza, he sent a specimen of his sputum to Professor A A Kanthack (qv), who, thinking it to be from some patient of Douty's, remarked to the latter that it was teeming with tubercle bacilli. Douty's Cambridge activities were ended by this announcement, and he became a wanderer in search of health. For a time he was a patient under Walther at Nordrach, and later settled in practice at Davos, where he carried out the Nordrach treatment at the Belvedere Hotel. After some years the excessive cold of Davos led him to seek a pleasanter climate. He settled eventually at Cannes, at the same time retaining rooms in Paris. Seeking to improve his position as a surgeon, he spent some months in London and passed the Fellowship in spite of severe intercurrent illness. He had wished to settle in London, where doubtless his connection among his old Davos patients would have been extensive, but his health would not permit this course. He returned to the Riviera and laid himself out for surgical practice. At Cannes he was Surgeon to the Asile Evangélique, and he was also Surgeon to the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital at Nice. Douty was a man of many-sided character, outspoken, upright, with troops of friends, of whom some had not always understood his candid utterances. He had a facility for attracting and managing patients. A man of the world, of extraordinary versatility, he was a connoisseur in music, literature, and in almost every form of art. There were, indeed, few subjects on which he had not clear and independent views. With a mind exceptionally virile, and little inclined to bow to authority as such, he had a shrewd eye for humbug in high places and a generous appreciation for merit in unlikely subjects. His striking personality exerted a direct and wholesome influence over his pupils and patients, especially the undergraduates at Cambridge between 1885 and 1897. No one was less like the traditional don. His degrees and diplomas were so numerous that, at the time of his death, he was probably the best qualified medical man in the world. His foreign degrees were necessary to enable him to practise in France, and he told interesting stories of his examinations, particularly of his struggle for the Paris MD. After a long courageous fight with ever-increasing physical disabilities and a life of very arduous work, Douty succumbed to an attack of fever and to cardiac failure at the Villa Florence, Cannes, on May 27th, 1911. In 1909 he had married Kathleen, third daughter of Sir Frederick Wills, Bart., and was survived by this lady and an infant son. He was buried at Clifford Chambers, near Stratford-on-Avon. A portrait of Douty accompanies his biography by Sir Humphry Rolleston in the *Lancet*, 1911, i, 1618. Publications:- *Quicksilber bei Syphilis*, Davos, 1899. *Le Sanalorium Idéal*, Thesis, 8vo, 5 plates, Paris, 1904. "Case of Cholecystotomy." - *Trans. Cambridge Med. Soc.*, 1890. "Laparotomy for Post-Typhlitic Abscess." - *Ibid.*, 1893. "Case of so-called Super-foetation." - *Ibid.*, 1894. "Caesarean Section." - *Ibid.*, 1897. "Climate and Cure of Consumption." - *Brit. Med. Jour.*, 1899, ii, 56; *Lancet*, 1899, i, 1055. "Case of Traumatic Aneurysm of the Carotid Artery caused by a Sewing Needle." - *Lancet*, 1899, ii, 1584.