He was equally passionate about anatomy, enthusiastically seeking out and dissecting the largest and finest specimens, including whales, and troubling his colleagues with his single-minded quest for money and space for his collection.

His sisters, Janet and Christina, provided a simple education at Brucefield for some poor friends, Daniel and James Thomson.

The courses that they taught at the medical school in Argyle Square, Edinburgh were recognized by the examining bodies of England, Scotland and Ireland.

For example, in mammals, the arm and hand of a human, the wing of a bird, the foreleg of a horse, and the flipper of a whale are all homologous forelimbs.

He continually made demands of the University of Aberdeen's Senate for additional room space and money for the museum, against the wishes of his colleagues in the faculty.

In 1866 he borrowed it, ostensibly to clean and remount it, but despite the society's urgent requests to have it returned, it stayed in Struthers' museum at Marischal College for ten years.

He had a powerful effect on medical education in Britain, in 1890 establishing the format of three years of "pre-clinical" academic teaching and examination in the sciences underlying medicine, including especially anatomy.

His 21st century successors at the anatomy school in Aberdeen write that "He would undoubtedly be greatly dismayed at the drastic reduction in the teaching of basic medical sciences, and the subsequent perceived decline in the anatomical knowledge of medical students and practicing clinicians," and they quote one of Struthers' sayings to his students:[9][10] Unless you are well informed in the foundation sciences and principles, you may practise your profession, but you will never understand disease and its treatment; your practice will be routine, the unintelligent application of the dogmas and directions of your textbook or teacher.

[11]Struthers was one of the first advocates of the theory of evolution, speaking publicly[13] and corresponding with Charles Darwin[14] about observations he made during his comparative anatomy studies.

Struthers was interested in abnormal variations in anatomy, such as additional toes, and he collected many specimens which he offered to show Darwin.

In those other mammals, the supra-condyloid foramen is an opening in the bone that important structures, the median nerve and the brachial artery, run through.

Now in the humerus of man, there is generally a trace of this passage, which is sometimes fairly well developed, being formed by a depending hook-like process of bone, completed by a band of ligament.

When present, the great nerve invariably passes through it; and this clearly indicates that it is the homologue and rudiment of the supra-condyloid foramen of the lower animals.

But if the occasional development of this structure in man is, as seems probable, due to reversion, it is a return to a very ancient state of things, because in the higher Quadrumana it is absent.

He brought the entire skeleton of a sei whale back to the anatomy department at Aberdeen, where for a century it was suspended overhead in the hall.

He vigorously collected examples of a wide range of species to form a museum of zoology, with the intention of illustrating Darwin's theories.

As an energetic and forceful personality with a strong enthusiasm for zoology, he alarmed his colleagues at the University of Aberdeen by constantly asking for money and space to acquire and house his collection.

[8] At the end of December 1883, a humpback whale appeared in the Firth of Tay off Dundee, attracting much local interest.

Struthers was not able to start dissecting it at once, as a local entrepreneur, John Woods, bought the whale and took it to his yard in Dundee, where on the first Sunday, 12,000 people paid to see it.

[22] The dissection was disturbed by John Woods, who admitted the public, for a fee, to watch Struthers and his assistants at work, with a military band playing in the background.

Struthers was able to remove much of the skeleton before Woods had the flesh embalmed; the carcass was then stuffed and sewn up to be taken on a profitable tour as far as Edinburgh and London.

He was grandfather of another explosives chemist, Sir James Irvine Orme Masson, and father-in-law of educator Simon Somerville Laurie, who married his daughter Lucy.