John Hutchinson was born in 1811 in Ryton, a village near Newcastle upon Tyne, where his father was a yeoman farmer and colliery manager.

His work gained him the degree of MD from Geissen, which gave him the title of Dr. Hutchinson, and allowed him to refer to himself as a physician, an important distinction.

In common with other practitioners of the time, Hutchinson was very concerned about the need for good ventilation in indoor environments, since disease was thought to be caused by miasmas of rotting matter, or ‘malaria’.

Despite his apparent success in life, in 1852 he abandoned both his London career and his family and signed on as a ship’s surgeon travelling to Melbourne, Australia and later to the gold-rush town of Sandhurst (Bendigo), where he practised as a physician.

After several high-profile disputes with both medical colleagues and other citizenshe sailed to Fiji in 1861, where he died a few months later after contracting dysentery.