[6] After education from 1880 to 1882 at the Dollar Institute in Scotland, J. S. Risien Russell studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating MB CM in 1886, and MD in 1893 with gold medal.

He went to London for postgraduate study at St Thomas's Hospital and won a British Medical Association (BMA) scholarship in 1895.

[7] Russell was appointed to the visiting medical staff of University College Hospital, becoming full physician and professor of clinical medicine.

[3] In 1900, he wrote the pioneer description of subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord with his junior colleagues, Batten and Collier.

[9] He clashed with psychiatrists for his belief that patients with psychosis should not be so readily committed to asylums when they might receive better care at home within their families, with support from general practitioners.

[9] The couple were divorced following a report in The Times in December 1913 that he had spent the night with an unidentified woman at the Great Northern Hotel, King's Cross.

English Heritage erected a blue plaque at 44 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London in 2021, at the site where he lived and ran his private practice from 1902 until his death in 1939.