successful completion of a professional course.
Turner was now qualified to practise, but he decided, with the help of his scholarship, to continue his studies for the London M.B. degree. In August 1854 he passed the intermediate examination, and in the following month he received from John Goodsir [q.v.], professor of anatomy in Edinburgh, the offer of the post of senior demonstrator in that department. The offer, which he owed to Paget's recommendation, was accepted; and in October, at the age of twenty-two, Turner crossed the Border for the first time, and entered the service of the university with which he was to be so closely associated for sixty-two years.
The thirteen years during which Turner worked under Goodsir were a testing-time in his career. His position was not at all secure nor altogether comfortable. He was very young and had no previous experience in teaching. He was merely Goodsir's private assistant, nominated and paid by the professor, without any direct commission from the university. He was English by birth and the product of an English school, thrust into a medical school which was at the height of its reputation and proudly confident of its superiority and its self-sufficiency. That Turner established his position and his reputation in spite of these disadvantages is a striking proof of his ability and strength of character. His industry was extraordinary, and was only equalled by the physical strength, derived apparently from the mother's side, which enabled him to work with the minimum of interruption from morning to night. Although his teaching work was very heavy, as Goodsir was not in good health, he found time to complete his London M.B. in 1857, to edit Paget's Lectures on Surgical Pathology, to produce several scientific papers, to publish his own Atlas and Handbook on Human Anatomy and Physiology (1857), and to take part in founding the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology in 1866. He also corresponded with Darwin, to whom he supplied information as to rudimentary parts in human and animal structure [see Darwin's letters in Turner's Life, pp. 186–90]. While he was thus establishing a position among men of science he was also steadily strengthening his position in the university. Nothing contributed more to this than his active part in the Volunteer movement of 1859. The improvement in his position was shown in 1861, when his demonstratorship became a university office with an additional salary from university funds (this enabled him to marry in 1863), and still more conclusively in 1867 when, on Goodsir's death, he was chosen by the curators as his successor in the chair of anatomy.
Turner's position was now secure, and all idea of returning to England was abandoned. At the same time the range of his activities was largely extended. The teaching of anatomy continued until 1903 to be his primary duty, and his eminence as a teacher is indisputable. He commanded the services of a series of efficient demonstrators, and he could point with legitimate pride to the fact that the chairs of anatomy throughout the Empire were largely filled by students who had received their early training at his hands. To the labour of teaching he added administrative and legislative work, for which he developed both taste and capacity. From the outset he was an active member of the senatus, and played a specially prominent part in all matters concerning the faculty of medicine, of which he was dean from 1878 to 1881. He was a leader in the opposition to the admission of women to medical classes, when the question was raised by Sophia Jex-Blake [q.v.]; and to the last he was an opponent of mixed classes in the study of medicine. He was the right-hand man of Sir Alexander Grant [q.v.] in collecting the large sums needed for the construction of the new medical buildings, and in organizing the great tercentenary celebration which in 1883 followed their completion. He found a congenial occupation in the equipment of the spacious accommodation now provided for the anatomical department, and especially in the arrangement and cataloguing of the museum, to which he himself made numerous and valuable contributions, notably of skulls from all parts of the world. On the death of Sir Alexander Grant, Turner became chairman of the extension committee; and in that capacity he obtained from his friend, William McEwan, a large benefaction to build the imposing hall for academic functions, which had been cut out of the original plans for want of sufficient funds. He was also active in securing the gift from Sir John Usher of an institute of public health and the establishment of a chair in that subject. When the Act of 1889 extended the functions and composition of the university court, Turner was elected by the senatus an original member of the new body, of which, as convener of the finance committee and later as principal,
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