[5] He died while walking along the banks of the River Tweed near his home at Stobo in the Scottish Borders on 30 September 1928.

He received a fellowship in 1883 to work in the University of Edinburgh's physiological department with Professor William Rutherford.

[4] In 1886 he became a lecturer in physiology at Surgeons' Hall,[4] and in the same year was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1886.

During this time he taught at the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine, giving lectures in physiology at Surgeons' Hall.

In Glasgow at that time deprivation was common and Paton investigated the relationship between poverty, nutrition, and growth.