 He was taken to the premises of the prominent surgeon Dr. Abraham Colles who saved Donnelly's arm from amputation, describing him as a "pocket Hercules".Another tale concerns Donnelly's insistence of carrying the body of an old lady who had died of a highly contagious fever to a local graveyard, where he buried the body himself in a grave that had been "reserved for a person of distinction".Donnelly was nearly six feet (1.83 m) tall and weighed almost 14 stone (196 lbs, 89 kg).