He was highly regarded for his scholarly writings on medical history but was widely denounced for disputing the germ theory of infectious diseases.

After graduation, he studied for a brief time with Karl von Rokitansky in Vienna and Rudolf Virchow in Berlin.

[1] After returning from Berlin in 1872, Creighton worked in London as a hospital registrar until his appointment in 1876 as demonstrator of anatomy at University of Cambridge.

Between 1881 and 1883 he published a three-volume translation from German of August Hirsch's Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology.

"[3] Creighton argued that vaccination was poisoning of the blood with contaminated material, which could provide no protection from disease.