Harold Ellis (surgeon)

Harold Ellis
Harold Ellis on the right
Born	(1926-01-13) 13 January 1926 (age 100) London, England
Education	The Queen's College, Oxford
Occupation	Surgeon
Family	Married; 2 children, 6 grandchildren

Harold Ellis, CBE, Mch, FRCS (born 13 January 1926) is an English retired surgeon. He was emeritus professor of surgery at the University of London and professor in the Department of Anatomy and Human Sciences at the King's College London School of Medicine. ^[1]

He held positions as a vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and of the Royal Society of Medicine and was president of the British Association of Surgical Oncology.

Early life and education

Harold Ellis was born in Stepney Green in 1926, the youngest of four children to dress makers. ^[2] He completed his early education from St Olave's Grammar School before gaining admission to study medicine at Oxford University Medical School. ^[2]

Early career

Ellis qualified as a doctor from Oxford in July 1948, the same month the National Health Service began. ^[3] He subsequently took up a post at the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford before completing national service from 1950 to 1951 as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. ^{[2] [4]} During his military service, he was responsible for the care of servicemen returning from the Korean War with severe spinal and cranial injuries. ^[2] Afterwards he continued his training as a surgical registrar in London, Sheffield and Oxford before taking up a post as senior lecturer in the University of London. In 1962, he took up the foundation chair of surgery at the Westminster Hospital, a post which he held until his retirement from practice in 1989. After a stint teaching anatomy in the University of Cambridge, he took up his present position in 1993. ^[4]

Ellis is one of the most notable British surgeons of the past fifty years, renowned both for his inspirational teaching ^[5] and as the author of the definitive student textbook Clinical Anatomy, now in its fourteenth edition. ^[6]

Awards and honours

In 1986 Ellis delivered the Bradshaw Lecture on the subject of breast cancer. ^[7]

The Professor Harold Ellis Medical Student Prize For Surgery ^[8] is named after him, and has been awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons since 2007. The International Journal of Surgery has awarded the Harold Ellis Prize in Surgery annually since 2003. ^[9]

Selected publications

• Ellis, Harold and Mahadevan, Vishy (2019). Clinical Anatomy: Applied Anatomy for Students and Junior Doctors (Fourteenth edition). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-1-119-32551-2.
• Ellis, Harold and Abdalla, Sala (2019). A History of Surgery (Third Edition). CRC Press. ISBN   978-1-138-61739-1.
• Ellis, Harold (2019). Operations that Made History. CRC Press. ISBN   978-1-138-33431-1.
• Ellis, Harold, Calne, Sir Roy Yorke and Watson, Christopher (2006). Lecture notes on general surgery (Eleventh edition). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific. ISBN   978-1-4051-3911-3.
• Ellis, Harold (2009). Cambridge Illustrated History of Surgery (Second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-72033-5.
• Kinirons, Mark and Ellis, Harold (2011). French's Index of Differential Diagnosis: An A-Z (Fifteenth edition). Hodder Arnold. ISBN   978-0-340-99071-1.
• Ellis, Harold, Logan, Bari and Dixon, Adrian (2009). Human Sectional Anatomy: Pocket Atlas of Body Sections, CT and MRI Images (Third edition). Hodder Arnold. ISBN   978-0-340-98516-8.
• Ellis, Harold and Watson, Christopher (2001). Pocket Diagnosis in General Surgery (Third edition). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-0-632-05479-4.
• Ellis, Harold, Feldman, Stanley and Harrop-Griffiths, William (2003). Anatomy for Anaesthetists (Eighth edition). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-1-4051-0663-4.

See also

• List of presidents of the Osler Club of London

References

1. "American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) - Harold Ellis, CBE, FRCS". clinical-anatomy.org. Retrieved 25 January 2026.
2. "Surgeon Professor Harold Ellis, who joined the NHS in its first month, reflects on 70 years of the NHS". Royal College of Surgeons. 2018. Archived from the original on 25 January 2026. Retrieved 25 January 2026.
3. Elliott, Jane (2 July 2008). "Devoted to the NHS for 60 years". BBC News.
4. "Prof Harold Ellis, CBE Authorised Biography – Debrett's People of Today, Prof Harold Ellis, CBE Profile". Archived from the original on 31 July 2012. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
5. "Student BMJ - The BMJ". Bmj.com. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
6. "Clinical Anatomy: Applied Anatomy for Students and Junior Doctors, 14th Edition". Wiley.com. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
7. Ellis, H. (September 1987). "The treatment of breast cancer: a study in evolution". Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons England. 69 (5). Royal College of Surgeons of England: 212–5. PMC   2498576 . PMID   3314632.
8. "We can't find that page". Archived from the original on 16 December 2024.
9. "The Harold Ellis Prize in Surgery" (PDF). Elsevier.com. Retrieved 26 June 2019.