[1][2] His father, John Dobell, was a wine merchant and his mother Julietta was a daughter of Samuel Thompson (1766–1837), a London political reformer.

Dobell’s choice of medical specialism was apparently made when he was still a student and courting his future wife.

When Elizabeth saw a plaque that recorded the death of seven brothers and sisters from consumption (tuberculosis), the disease that killed many of her close relations, she became emotional and expressed her dismay that doctors were powerless to prevent it.

[7] In 1863 Charles Darwin wrote to Dobell to thank him for a copy of his On the germs and vestiges of disease and they corresponded on matters related to hereditary conditions.

[8][9] In 1882 Dobell moved to Bournemouth, where in 1885 he became a consulting physician at the newly opened Mont Dore hydropathic sanatorium for patients with chest diseases.