A surgeon at the University of Glasgow and mentor to Tobias Smollett and Dr. John Moore. H.L. Fulton writes, " was apprenticed to William Stirling and John Gordon, surgeons in a large practice and formerly masters to Moore's distant cousin Tobias Smollett." (Fulton, H.L. "Moore, John (1729-1802)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Vol. 38. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. 970.)