Born on 6 March 1849 in
Falkirk, he was third child and second son of the nine children of George Hamilton, M.D., medical practitioner in the town, who wrote for ''
Chambers's Encyclopædia'', and his wife, Mary Wyse, daughter of a
naval surgeon. A sister Mary married on 9 February 1891 becoming the second wife of Charles Saunders Dundas, 6th Viscount Melville. At the age of 17 Hamilton became a medical student at Edinburgh, and was drawn to
pathology by
William Rutherford Sanders. After qualifying in 1870, he was house surgeon at the old
Edinburgh Infirmary, resident medical officer at
Chalmers Hospital,
Edinburgh, and for two years at the
Northern Hospital,
Liverpool, where he wrote a prize essay on
Diseases and injuries of the Spinal Cord. It enabled him to spend two years in working in pathology in
Vienna,
Munich,
Strasbourg, and
Paris. In 1876, he returned as demonstrator of pathology to Edinburgh, and was also pathologist to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. During Professor Sanders's illness (1880-1) he delivered the lectures, but was passed over in the choice of his successor. In 1908 he was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society of London. In 1907, the
University of Edinburgh granted him an honorary doctorate (LLD). He died on 19 February 1909 at home, 35 Queens Road in
Aberdeen, and was buried in the city. ==Works==