Campbell was the youngest son of the Rev Robert Campbell, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. His medical education was at Glasgow University, and he qualified there in 1902. While waiting to take his English Fellowship he held posts at the London Hospital, Mildmay Mission Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton. For many years he was attached to the London Hospital as clinical assistant to the orthopaedic department, which was in the charge of Robert Milne; this post he kept after being appointed surgeon to the Victoria and Rochford Hospitals at Southend. At the outbreak of the second world war in 1939 he became surgeon to an EMS hospital at Brentwood, Essex, but in 1940 he moved to Paignton, at first as a general practitioner, and soon became attached to the local cottage hospital where he worked until the age of 75. While living in Southend he was Justice of the Peace and a keen member of the Rotary Club; his chief pastime was sailing a Thames barge in which he used to take numbers of his colleagues and students for week-end parties. After moving to Devon music and gardening filled a good deal of his leisure hours, but eventually both his grand pianos were given to local schools. Campbell was a sincerely religious man and was always ready to comfort those of his patients who needed God's help; this side of his character especially appealed to the elderly people whom he had to treat when he worked in Devon. In 1910 he married Isabel Marguerite Hayter who came from a musical family; she died in 1955. In 1956 he married Miss Tweedie Smith, daughter of a former Mayor of Southend; she had been a great friend of the family since 1924. Campbell died suddenly while on a visit to London on 24 December 1967 at the age of 86.