In 2008, Dr David Nott amputated the shoulder of a teenage boy in the the town of Rutshuru, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He had never done the operation before but he knew someone that had and so, using instructions sent over text message from a colleague in London as his guide, he carried out the surgery. A renowned war doctor, surgeon and professor at Imperial College London, Nott, who was volunteering with Médecins sans Frontières at the time, saved the child’s life by doing the amputation. Over decades of work his reputation as an innovative trauma surgeon, working in…

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