[1] Having received his general education at the High School, he was apprenticed to his father, and at the same time attended the practice of the Dundee Royal Infirmary.
In 1842, he matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1848 graduated M.D., obtaining a gold medal for his thesis 'On Inflammatory Effusions into the Substance of the Lungs as modified by Contagious Fevers'.
In October of the same year, he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at the University of Glasgow, under Allen Thomson, and also pathologist to the royal infirmary, which posts he held up to 1855.
In that year he was sent out to the Crimea under Dr Robert S. D. Lyons as assistant pathologist to the commission appointed to investigate the diseases from which the British troops were suffering (Parl.
In 1860, he was selected for the post of professor of pathology in the newly constituted army medical school at Fort Pitt, Chatham, which was afterward removed to Netley.