Educated at the University of Edinburgh, he served as casualty house surgeon at the Temperance Hospital, London, and as resident medical officer at Booth Hall Infirmary for Children, Manchester. Then returning to London he was medical superintendent at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in 1900. He studied at St Bartholomew's and the London Hospitals for his primary and final Fellowship examinations. He went to South Africa as a civil surgeon during the South African war, remained there practising in Johannesburg from 1902 to 1920, moved to Durban, came back to Johannesburg in 1923, and died there of influenza on 25 June 1935, leaving "nearly half a million sterling".