Bernard McCarthy was educated at Melbourne University, gaining a BSc there in 1948, qualifying MB BS in 1950 and received the Melbourne MS in 1955. After early appointments at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, and as a demonstrator in anatomy and clinical surgery at Melbourne University, he came to Britain in 1955 and after passing the Fellowship became Nuffield Dominion clinical assistant in the Nuffield Department of Plastic Surgery at Oxford in 1956. He was registrar in plastic surgery at Odstock Hospital, Salisbury from 1957 to 1958 and spent 1959 as a staff specialist in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Roosevelt Hospital, New York. Returning to Australia, he spent most of the rest of his career specialising as a consultant in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Dandenong and District Hospital and at Geelong Hospital Melbourne, and was medical administrator at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne from 1975. He died on 21 August 1993.