He was the eldest son of seven children, and educated at Pocklington Grammar School, subsequently going on to University College London (UCL) to study arts.

[4] He wrote several articles including contributions to Clifford Allbutt’s System of Medicine, and in 1898, he published Medical Diseases of Infancy and Childhood.

He was closely connected with the British Medical Journal throughout his career, being first a reporter, then principal sub-editor, and then assistant editor in 1895.

He succeeded the editor, Ernest Hart, in 1898, following which he gave up much of his clinical practice, ultimately leaving it completely from 1902 to dedicate his whole time to the journal's editorship which he held for thirty years.

The results, including the drug costs, were published in a series of articles that lasted until 1908, and exposed numerous medications as "valueless"[5] and containing only minute quantities of what was claimed.