In 1807 he became assistant curator of Surgeons' Hall Museum under Professor John Thomson and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1808, upon the proposal of Andrew Wardrop, Alexander Keith of Dunnottar and James Russell.

He taught surgery from 1826 at the Aldersgate Street medical academy with Sir William Lawrence and Frederick Tyrrell, and published surgical treatises.

In retaliation he founded the West London Hospital for Surgery near the Edgware Road, and invited general practitioners to watch him operate.

[10] Wardrop was associated with Thomas Wakley in the founding of The Lancet in 1823, for which he first wrote savage articles and, later, witty and scurrilous lampoons in his column 'Intercepted Letters'.

The letters, under the pseudonym "Brutus", were thinly disguised as by leading London surgeons, revealing their nepotism, venality and incompetence.