Born on January 13th, 1843, the only son of William Bruce Ferguson, of St Andrew's, British Guiana, and 1 Wellesley Villas, Cheltenham. He entered Cheltenham College as a day boy in February, 1857, left in 1861, and matriculated from Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, on October 31st, 1861. He graduated BA in 1865 after obtaining a First Class in the Natural Science School. He received his medical education at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he served the office of House Surgeon, and then settled in private practice in Cheltenham. He was appointed Medical Officer to the Branch Dispensary, and in 1874 Surgeon to the General Hospital at Cheltenham, and was also Medical Officer to Cheltenham College and to the Cheltenham Female Training College. Subsequently he became Consulting Surgeon to the Home for Sick Children and to the Normal Training College. He was always actively interested in the British Medical Association and was elected President when it met at Cheltenham in 1901. He resided and practised at Altidore Villa, Pittville, Cheltenham. He was called to operate at the General Hospital on Thursday, November 27th, 1906, upon a case of strangulated inguinal hernia. He began the operation at 5 pm, and found that he had to remove about two feet of gangrenous intestine. He was in the act of tying-off the mesentery when he fell back dead in the presence of his three house surgeons. The operation was completed by a colleague who was hurriedly summoned. He was buried in Prestbury Churchyard after a funeral service in Cheltenham College Chapel. Ferguson was a man of wide outlook and great culture. He did much to re-establish the reputation of the Cheltenham waters and was a member of the Medical Committee formed in 1895 to report upon their value. A new spa was opened in 1906 as a result of the Committee's report. He was instrumental in introducing the use of X rays as a means of diagnosis at the Cheltenham General Hospital. He examined in the Honours School of Natural Science in the University of Oxford from 1881-1883, and when the new degrees of Bachelor and Master of Surgery were introduced Ferguson and Jacobson (qv) were the first to present themselves for examination, although the former was nearly sixty years of age. He spoke French fluently, and for many years spent his holidays in foreign travel visiting most of the medical schools in Europe and America. He was unmarried.