Charles Walker Cathcart, CBE CM FRCS FRCSE (16 March 1853 – 22 February 1932) was a Scottish surgeon who worked for most of his career at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE).

During the First World War he jointly published an account of the value of sphagnum moss as a wound dressing which led to its widespread use by the British Army for that purpose.

His textbook A Surgical Handbook, written jointly with Francis Caird and first published in 1889, became a best seller running to 19 editions by 1921.

[8] Cathcart was house surgeon in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) under Professor Thomas Annandale.

[10] This became popular because it contained much practical advice and guidance and the single volume was small enough to fit into a coat pocket.

[11] In later life, he produced jointly with his colleague J. N. Jackson Hartley an expanded and updated version of the original entitled Requisites and methods in surgery.

[13] In 1914 Cathcart and his friend Professor Isaac Bayley Balfour, Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (RBGEd) wrote an article for The Scotsman.

Moreover, they argued, cotton wool had to be imported, at considerable expense and risk, while the moss was widely available in the colder, wetter areas of the British Isles and was free.

[13] Cathcart subsequently published an account in the British Medical Journal[15] and asked the War Office for permission for its general use as a wound dressing.

A similar enterprise was set up in Dublin, in England and then in the United States when it joined the war, most using Cathcart's model as an exemplar.

[14] In 1916 the London Graphic reported that "the collecting, drying and making into surgical dressings of Sphagnum moss has become a national industry in Scotland ... the work is being extended all over Ireland, England and Wales.

1894) was killed in action in the Mesopotamian campaign in the First World War on 9 June 1916 serving in the Royal Field Artillery.