Born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on October 1st, 1810, and came of a Northumbrian stock, both his father and mother being natives of Alwinton. He was educated at Witton-le-Wear, Durham, and in 1827 was apprenticed to T Leighton, Senior Surgeon at the Newcastle Infirmary, to whom £500 was paid as Embleton

Born at Preston, and received his medical education at the Borough School and Guy's Hospital. He settled in general practice in Manchester in 1834, and in 1847, when an alarming and disastrous epidemic of typhus raged there, was the general superintendent of the extensive arrangements made for check