During World War I he served as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was awarded the Serbian Order of St Sava.

During his career in Edinburgh he became an early user of local anaesthetic techniques in general surgery and wrote a highly regarded booklet on the topic.

[6] Here he served alongside C M Grieve, later known as the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, who was Sergeant-Caterer of the RAMC Officer’s Mess.

[8] His specialist interests included the use of local anaesthesia in general surgery and he published a monograph on the subject in 1906.

[9] Notes on local anaesthesia in general surgery was described in the Lancet as "...for long the best source of information on the subject in English.

"[6] Struthers noted that much of the research on the subject had taken place in the US, France and Germany and that its introduction into clinical practice into.

[9] Wildsmith suggested that it was Struthers' work that led to the development of spinal hypotensive anaesthesia by Gillies and Griffiths.

[10] With the pathologist James Walker Dawson, Struthers conducted original work on osteitis fibrosa cystica.

Their work was considered of such importance that an entire issue of the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1923 was devoted to the subject.