 Within months of his leaving the premiership Chamberlain 's health began to fail ; he resigned from the cabinet , and died after a short illness in November 1940 . Dunglass had volunteered for active military service , seeking to rejoin the Lanarkshire Yeomanry shortly after Chamberlain left Downing Street . The consequent medical examination revealed that Dunglass had a hole in his spine surrounded by tuberculosis in the bone . Without surgery he would have been unable to walk within a matter of months . An innovative and hazardous operation was performed in September 1940 , lasting six hours , in which the diseased bone in the spine was scraped away and replaced with healthy bone from the patient 's shin . 
