John Webb, a consultant general and endocrine surgeon for the Bristol United Hospitals, was a masterly technical surgeon and pioneer cytologist. In an era when a lump in the breast presaged uncertain frozen section biopsy and mastectomy, Webb mastered fine needle aspiration and accurate diagnosis, saving countless patients from avoidable surgery, achieved through single-handed endeavour and a microscope in his own home. His work forms the basis of the routine investigation of suspected breast cancer in modern practice. He was born in Clifton, Bristol on 29 December 1929, the son of Charles Reginald Webb, who worked in the corn trade, and Gwendoline (‘Queenie’) Webb née Moon. He was educated at Sefton Park Junior School and Cotham Grammar School, where he was head of the school from 1947 to 1948. He then entered the University of Bristol Medical School, graduating MB ChB in 1953, when he won the silver medal. He was a house officer at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1953 and 1955, and then carried out his National Service as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1955 until 1957. He was a surgical registrar at Frenchay Hospital, from 1957 to 1960 and then spent seven years in Birmingham and Coventry as a registrar and senior registrar. He returned to Bristol in 1967, when he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to Bristol Royal Infirmary, a post he held until he retired in December 1994. Following his retirement, he became a senior research fellow in the department of surgery at the University of Bristol. As a general surgeon, he retained broad general skills in all disciplines owing to his exhaustive training experience, but his research and clinical specialty interests focused on breast, endocrine and salivary gland disease. Central to this was his conviction that cytology, which formed the focus of his life’s research, could hold a key to investigating and thereby treating these diseases better. He undertook a higher degree, a ChM, awarded in 1974, with his thesis entitled ‘A cytological study of mammary disease’. This entailed studying with a leading cytologist, Paul Lopes Cardozo, in Leiden. He was a Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1975. His fascination with cytology did not stop with gaining his ChM; he became expert in all aspects of it, and this led to him being awarded the fellowship of the International Association of Cytologists – extremely rare for a surgeon. In 1993, he was also awarded the Erica Wachtel medal of the British Association of Cytopathology for his long service to the subject. His research changed the modern surgical practice of the treatment of breast cancer, heralding the concept of the one-stop clinic where a breast lump was examined and its nature ascertained through fine needle aspiration cytology at the initial consultation. Owing to his own cytological expertise, he was able to diagnose varied conditions and was called upon by colleagues around the city when a diagnosis was elusive. One memorable case involved a request from the physicians to identify the primary in a patient with metastatic disease. Noticing a bony metastasis in the vertebral body of C3, he performed fine-needle aspiration via an open mouth technique through the oropharynx. This was performed on the ward with minimal fuss or disruption, the diagnosis of a colonic primary being provided the following morning. He was the surgeon of choice to fellow consultants in need of help and a studious trainer of junior surgeons, from whom he demanded as near to his own meticulous surgical technique as they could achieve. He was president of the British Association of Endocrine Surgeons from 1992 to 1994. In his youth, John Webb was a fine rugby player, appearing at fly half for Bristol. He sang in the choir at Clifton College and was an ardent student of history. A keen observer of human traits, he had a wry sense of humour, put to use in nicknames for colleagues whose aspirations may have exceeded their abilities. Predeceased by his wife Audrie (née Bowen), whom he married in 1955, he died from old age and frailty on 21 September 2024 at the age of 94. He was survived by their four children, Mark, Dominque, Charlotte and Jason, most of whom have followed their father into either surgery or professions allied to medicine, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.