Hill and Gilchrist also appreciated that the condition could be prevented by improving personal hygiene and avoiding contact with sufferers, and both men advocated these and similar preventive measures. Cancers
Hills views on cancer treatment were that cancers should be radically excised aiming for cure, an approach in contrast to the mainstream view of leading European surgeons such as Alexander Monro primus, Samuel Sharp (c1709– 1778) and Henri François Le Dran (1685–1770) that cancers should only be minimally excised to relieve symptoms. He was able to review the outcome of surgery in 88 patients, 86 of whom recovered from the procedure and 77 of these enjoyed a normal expectation of life ‘according to the bills of mortality.’ These outcomes were much superior to the documented results of, for example, Alexander Monro primus. The cancers concerned were mainly skin cancers and a few breast cancers and Hill acknowledges the difficulty in dierentiating some cancers from benign lesions in the era before histological examination. He concludes that his results justify his recommendation that tumours, including ‘the most trifling,’ should be ‘cut entirely out.’

Head injuries
It is Hills chapter entitled ‘Disorders of the head from external violence’ that marks him out as a careful clinician and an innovative surgeon able to achieve remarkable outcomes by the standards of the day. Hill recorded 18 cases of head injury which he had treated over 40 years. The cause of the injury, the clinical features, his treatment and the outcome in each case are all recorded in detail.
James Hill (30 October 1703 – 18 October 1776) was a Scottish surgeon working in Dumfries who advocated curative excision for cancer rather than the palliative approach adopted by many leading surgeons of the day. By follow-up of his patients over years he demonstrated that his radical approach resulted in better outcomes than those published by contemporaries. His experience in diagnosing and treating intracranial bleeding after head injury by directed trephine resulted in the best results published in the 18th century and represent an important landmark in the management of post-traumatic intracranial haemorrhage. Early life
James Hill was the son of Rev James Hill (1676-1743), minister of the parish church of Kirkpatrick Durham in Kirkcudbrightshire, and his wife Agnes Muirhead (1678-1742), daughter of a Dumfries merchant. James Hill was born in the village of Kirkliston, West Lothian on 30 October 1703. On 17 May 1723 he was apprenticed to the Edinburgh surgeon, physician and philosopher George Young (1692-1757),  from whom he learned the value of careful observation and scepticism in medicine. It is known from Hills later writing that Young was a powerfully influential figure to his young apprentice during the latters formative professional years. Hill, like many Edinburgh surgical apprentices attended lectures at Surgeons’ Hall but like the majority of apprentices of the period did not proceed to a surgical diploma or a medical degree in the newly established University of Edinburgh Medical School. During Hills apprenticeship there was no teaching hospital in Edinburgh.