He was admitted a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1872 and four years later was elected to the fellowship, having in the meantime won gold medal at both his Bachelor and Master of Surgery examinations at the University of London.

At the Epileptic Hospital, Regent's Park on 25 November 1884, he became the first to perform a surgical primary removal of a brain tumor after physician Alexander Hughes Bennett (1848-1901)[2] had diagnosed the location using neurological findings alone.

His sterling worth came to be recognised later, and he showed himself a firm but dignified and courteous ruler during his term of office as President of the Royal College of Surgeons.

He was not only a good surgeon and a fine artist, but he was a linguist, a carpenter, a poet, a botanist, an ornithologist, and an oarsman, while his great knowledge of books made him an admirable honorary librarian at the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society of Medicine.

He alone knew the minute details of his life and practice, for as a young man he was usually left in charge of the patients on whom Lister had operated in private.