Having become a member of the London College of Surgeons in 1831, Wilson was asked by Dr. Jones Quain, then Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at University College, London, to be his assistant, and he soon after was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy under Richard Quain. Wilson was a capital teacher of anatomy, and his private museum of dissections prepared by his own hands fully illustrated his manipulative capacity. He superintended the execution of the illustrations to the celebrated Quain’s Anatomy, and also those to Liston’s Practical Surgery (1837). When Dr. Jones Quain retired from University College Hospital in 1838, Wilson resigned his appointments also, and established a school of anatomy under the title of Sydenham College, which however did not prove ultimately successful. He then devoted himself to such private practice as he could obtain in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, eking out his income by taking pupils, and by literary work. In 1838 he appeared as an author with “The Dissector’s Manual of Practical and Surgical Anatomy,” subsequently producing the “Anatomist’s Vade Mecum” (1840), of which many editions have been called for. In the same year he became Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology at the Middlesex Hospital. Meanwhile Wilson had made the acquaintance of a man who was destined to turn his thoughts in the direction which became permanent. His father, after retiring from the navy, had taken a mansion at Deham, Bucks, and set up a private lunatic asylum; and in connection with this establishment Wilson met Mr. Thomas Wakley, M.P., the founder of the _Lancet_, and coroner for Middlesex. Mr. Wakley appointed Wilson sub-editor of the _Lancet_ in 1840, a post which he held for several years, continuing to write for that journal after resigning the more onerous post when his private practice increased. About this time he became Consulting Surgeon to the Marylebone Infirmary, and gained a very extensive experience of every department of hospital surgery. In fact, it appeared at first that Wilson would probably make his mark as a pure surgeon. No more certain path, however, opening in this direction, Mr. Wakley considerably influenced Wilson towards choosing a special line of practice as a means of success. There was much open opposition at that time among medical men to the idea of specialisation, and Mr. Wakley succeeded in overcoming Wilson’s fear of sinking under the dreaded name of quack. The choice of a specialty was not difficult, as skin diseases or dermatology then constituted an almost uncultivated field. “I have never regretted my choice,” he remarked on one occasion;[22] “there is only one more beautiful thing in the world than a fine healthy skin, and that is a rare skin disease.”