In 1865 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Zurich with the dissertation "La constance de la force et les mouvements musculaires".
[1] In Zurich he studied ophthalmology with Johann Friedrich Horner, then continued his education at Berlin as a pupil of Albrecht von Graefe.
In 1869 he began work as an assistant to Frédéric Recordon at the Asile des Aveugles (Asylum for the Blind) in Lausanne.
[2] From 1874 to 1886 he served as a city councilor in Lausanne — as a member of the Constituent Assembly (Vaud) in 1885 he voted in favor of women's suffrage.
In 1910 he founded the "Asile Gabrielle-Dufour" for the visually impaired, an institution named in memory of his deceased daughter.