A surgeon and amateur photographer, Thomas Keith was an innovator in both these fields. He trained in surgery at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently ran a medical practice in Great Stuart Street with his brother George. Success came swiftly, and Keith became a leading gynaecologist and an expert in the surgical treatment of ovarian and uterine diseases. As a photographer, he worked with the waxed paper process. His work is highly artistic and achieves subtle and strong effects through the exact use of chemical processes. Keith gave up photography after 1859 due to the demands of his flourishing medical practice, but by this time he had already created an invaluable photographic record of nineteenth-century Edinburgh.