No information is available about Leo Charles McCarthy beyond that contained in issues of the *New Zealand Medical Register*. He qualified MB, ChB New Zealand in 1939, obtained the Fellowship of the College in 1948 and that of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1951, and that at some time

It could be said that had Tom Smiley not been a cigarette smoker in 1941, his patients and colleagues, thoracic surgery and his own family and local community would never have known him as a fine surgeon, husband and father and dedicated churchman, for it was a cigarette-case in his breast-pocket wh