Born in London in 1847, and educated at St Olave's Grammar School, Southwark, and at King's College, Strand, where he obtained a Warneford Scholarship. After passing through his medical training he was appointed House Physician to the Seamen's Hospital at Greenwich in 1872. In 1873 he turned his attention to the pursuit of surgery, and was elected House Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, Manchester. At the close of 1874 he returned to London as Surgical Registrar of the Middlesex Hospital, where he remained for the remaining seven years of his life. Lyell evinced much scientific knowledge and was most assiduous in the performance of his duties. His work, owing to the existence of the Cancer Department, was no sinecure, and his annual reports of the surgical practice of the hospital are among the best of their kind up to 1882. In 1879-1880 he undertook to superintend the post-mortems of the surgical cases at the hospital, and thus rendered valuable aid to the Pathologist. In addition he practised as an ophthalmologist and became Clinical Assistant at the Moorfields Hospital, and was at the same time elected as Ophthalmic Surgeon at the Great Northern Hospital. Later he was elected Assistant Surgeon to the former institution. In 1879 he was elected Assistant Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital. He was a Fellow of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, a member of the Pathological and Clinical Societies, and a past-President of the Middlesex Hospital Medical Society. He practised at 26 Harley Street, and died from acute pneumonia on October 2nd, 1882. Publications: Besides publishing the Reports above mentioned, Lyell read a paper, in conjunction with Dr Powell, before the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society on a "Case of Basic Cavity of the Lung treated by Paracentesis." - *Med-Chir Trans*, 1880, lxiii, 333.