Eric William Taylor was a consultant surgeon at Inverclyde Royal Hospital, Greenock. Born on 31 December 1943 he was the eldest of the five children of William George Taylor, a prison officer, and his wife Nancy Lilian née Mannering, the daughter of a dockyard employee. Educated at the Thomas Hardye School, Dorchester from 1955 to 1962, he then studied medicine at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School qualifying MB BS in 1967. After house jobs at Edgeware General Hospital he entered the Royal Navy and moved to the Royal Naval Hospitals, Plymouth and Haslar. While there he was mentored by surgeon commanders John Wilberforce Richardson and Philip Charles Fulford. During the next few years he continued his surgical training in Birmingham, Aberdeen and at St Mary’s where his interest in vascular surgery was encouraged by Harry ‘Felix’ Eastcott. He became a fellow of the college in 1974 and in the following year was sent to Gibraltar as surgeon to the Royal Naval Hospital. There he assumed sole surgical care of around 30,000 service personnel and their families, covering a wide range of clinical problems. He was even asked to extend his skills by operating on one of the famous Barbery apes that had enlarged testicles. Operating in the hospital’s morgue he castrated the creature but sadly, after biopsy, no disease was found. On his return to the UK in 1976 he was promoted to surgeon commander and appointed consultant surgeon at Haslar. When he left the navy in 1982 he joined the staff of the Vale of Leven Hospital in Scotland and progressed from leading the surgical division to becoming medical director. Finally he transferred to the Inverclyde Royal Hospital where he stayed until retirement in 2007. A member of the Surgical Infection Society and the British Society of Gastroenterology, he was also a fellow of the Association of Surgeons. He published papers on bowel preparation, antibiotic prophylaxis and post-operative surgical infection (on which he was a recognised international authority. Travelling frequently his contributions were highly valued in developing countries. During a three month sabbatical he had established a much needed intensive care unit in Pataan Hospital in Nepal. After his retirement he went to Malawi and worked at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe under the auspices of VSO and with the support of the Scottish Executive. In 1965 he married Miss Vincent and they had a son and daughter. Later marriages produced a further son and daughter. Outside medicine he enjoyed hockey, skiing and philately. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died from colorectal cancer on 4 October 2016 aged 72 survived by his wife, Celia and children Sarah, William, Katy and Peter.