Son of Charles B Nankivell, MD Pisa, Physician to the Consumption Hospital, Torquay, and formerly Senior Surgeon to the Coventry Hospital. Arthur Nankivell was educated at University College Hospital, where he served as House Surgeon. He was appointed Surgeon to the Chatham House of Refuge and Assistant Visiting Surgeon for Chatham under the Contagious Diseases Act. He was elected House Surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, Chatham, in 1866, and retained the post until 1893, the title in the meantime having been changed to Resident Surgeon. He retired to Ashley Lodge, Torquay, where he lived with Charles Atkinson Nankivell, MB Lond, until he died in 1899. Nankivell was an outstanding example of the evils attending the unrestricted tenure of office in a public institution. Appointed House Surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Chatham, when he was a young and promising surgeon, he clung to the position nearly to the end of his life as he had not the courage to give up a small but certain salary for the open competition in which he would have been successful. He deteriorated steadily, became self-centred, moved in a small world where he was the autocrat, lived in fear of being married - which never happened to him - and died a disappointed man. Publications: "Excision of the Knee-joint for Injury." - *Brit Med Jour*, 1868, i, 30. "Case of Urinary Calculus in the Vagina." - *Ibid*, 1868, i, 479. "The Working of the Contagious Diseases Act at Chatham." - *Ibid*, 1869, i, 564.