Born at Aleppo, son of Dr A A Altounyan, an Armenian, founder of the hospital of his name in Aleppo, and his Northern-Irish wife, he was educated at Rugby, went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he was an exhibitioner, and then to the Middlesex Hospital. The greater part of his surgical career was spent in the hospital at Aleppo, where he returned at the end of the first world war, having served in the RAMC and won the Military Cross in France for gallantry in action. He was a close friend of T E Lawrence, whom he met before the war when Lawrence was an archaeologist at Carchemish on the Euphrates; he wrote the poetic lament "Ornament of Honour" on learning of Lawrence's death. During the second world war he rejoined the RAMC and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His official role of medical officer was an effective cover for activities as an expert adviser on Middle Eastern affairs. In 1941 he was attached to the Arab Legion under General Sir John Glubb and took an active part in the emergence of Syria as an independent state; the first president of Syria placed great reliance on his advice. After the Suez campaign (1958), when Syria severed diplomatic relations with Great Britain, Altounyan lost all his possessions in Syria, which, including the hospital, were seized without compensation and, after a life of comparative affluence, he was reduced to poverty, a poor reward for his loyalty to Britain but a fate he accepted without complaint or bitterness. He married Dora, daughter of W G Collingwood, Ruskin's last secretary, who was well known as a novelist and an authority on Lake District antiquities; her brother was the Oxford historian and philosopher R G Collingwood. They had four daughters and one son, who is a medical man and holder of the AFC and was a model for one of the five children in Arthur Ransome's books. Altounyan died at Lanehead, Coniston, where he retired on leaving Syria, on 13 March 1962 at the age of 72. He was intensely interested in the arts, a poet, a chess player, and a vigorous conversationalist, whose upbringing enabled him to appreciate the viewpoints of both East and West. Sailing was also one of his recreations.