In 1866 he was awarded the diploma of M.R.C.S.Eng and served as Medical Officer on board the SS Great Eastern when she laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable later that same year.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1877 and delivered their inaugural Bradshaw Lecture in 1881 entitled Nervous Affections of the Hand.
He was an authority of Sanitation Science and held strong views about the soil's ability to deal with waste.
He wrote a book, "The Earth in relation to the Preservation and Destruction of Contagia" which dealt with the relation of medical science to geology in areas such as water supply and sewerage disposal, which had been the subject of his Milroy Lecture to the Royal College of Physicians in 1899.
[1] With Sir William Jenner and Edward Sieveking he founded Museum of Hygiene at University College, London in 1877, which was formally incorporated under license of the Board of Trade.