Born in 1794 the son of a Scottish minister, he entered Edinburgh University in 1808 and two years later began to attend lectures in surgery and anatomy. He then became an assistant and demonstrator in anatomy, and remained in that position until 1815, when he was appointed house surgeon at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He continued his training in London at the London Hospital and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and by the age of twenty-two was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons. He worked in Edinburgh between 1818 and 1828, and proved to be an excellent surgeon, operating with success on cases that other surgeons considered incurable, but in time became unpopular because of his abrasive argumentative manner, his tendency to overly criticize incompetent surgeons, and his involvement in a series of disputes.
