Born, 1852, educated King's College, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh University, graduating, 1875; after a brief visit to Vienna, appointed House-Surgeon to Joseph Lister, Professor of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and also appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy in Edinburgh University, 1876-1877; Lister's first House Surgeon, King's College Hospital, 1877; Extra-Sambrooke Surgical Registrar, 1878; Assistant Surgeon and Teacher of Practical Surgery, 1880; Surgeon with Care of Out-Patients, 1887; Surgeon and Teacher of Operative Surgery, 1889; Professor of the Principles and Practice of Surgery, 1902; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1894; Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1879; Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons, 1888, 1890-1892; President, Royal College of Surgeons, 1914-1916; Civil Consulting Surgeon to British forces during the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902; Consulting Surgeon to the Royal Navy, 1915; Knight Commander, Order of St Michael and St George, 1916; elected Member of Parliament for the University of Edinburgh and St Andrews, 1917; Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, 1918-1922; Died, 1932.
Publications: translated Robert Koch, Investigations into the etiology of traumatic infective diseases (London, 1880); Antiseptic surgery, its principles, practice, history and results (Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1882), that was derived from his thesis for the Jacksonian prize awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons, 1881; Manual of the antiseptic treatment of wounds (Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1885); Suppuration and septic diseases (Y. J. Pentland, Edinburgh and London, 1889); translated Carl Flugge, Micro-organisms, with special reference to the etiology of the infective diseases (London, 1890); The objects and limits of operations for cancer (Bailliere and Co., London, 1896); On the treatment of tuberculosis diseases in their surgical aspect (J. Bale and Co., London, 1900); Tuberculosis diseases of bones and joints, their pathology, symptoms, and treatment (London, 1911); Lister and his achievement (Longmans and Co., London, 1925), the first Lister Memorial Lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, 1925.