[2] He went to school at the Lycée Saint Louis, Paris, France, and then returned to Scotland to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

Although he had won a commission as an army surgeon, as a prize in the military surgery class, there was no job available, so he travelled out to Canton, China, where he ran the hospital during a period of civil unrest in 1846.

[1] Murray moved to Shanghai, China, where he ran a large practice with another pioneering physician, George Rogers Hall of Rhode Island.

[3] Murray sent a large number of specimens that same year to the Museum of Economic Botany in Edinburgh, including a seaweed resembling Corsican moss, used in Japan as an article of food; vegetable wax from Japan, with specimen of the fruit of the plant which yields it; ... seeds of 'vegetable cloth brush'; nuts of Quisqualis indica, used by the Chinese for worms .. taken every other day for three times.

However "owing to pecuniary losses"[1] he had to start working again, and in 1875 moved to the seaside town of Scarborough, England, where he practised for fifteen years, retiring in 1890.

He was a keen Freemason, becoming Junior Warden of the Grand Lodge of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, England.