The family left the farm and moved to Nether Quarry Holes off Easter Road in Leith (the harbour area of Edinburgh) in his youth.

In 1875, aged 16, he joined the SS Tantallon Castle, a mail ship, at that time bound for Port Adelaide in Australia.

His teachers had included Thomas Annandale, Patrick Heron Watson, James Duncan, Douglas Argyll Robertson and John Chiene.

In November his old classmate and friend Thomas Anderson Stuart appointed him Medical Superintendent of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney.

He also served as Honorary Physician at the Hospital for Sick Children, but clashed with its lady superintendent, Frances Holden, forcing him to step down in 1889.

In the First World War he returned to Britain serving as a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, based at an auxiliary hospital in Essex.

He then moved as a specialist surgeon to treat wounded at the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital in Millbank, London.