 He later won a Vans Dunlop scholarship to study botany and zoology at the University of Edinburgh.He transferred to medicine and graduated with an MB ChB in 1912, with first-class honours, and then undertook a research scholarship, receiving a Diploma in Public Health (DPH) in 1913.Following a short period in general practice, Smith became an assistant in at the University of Edinburgh department of forensic medicine at the suggestion of Professor Henry Harvey Littlejohn.