Born in Dundee on June 16th 1832, he studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh beginning in 1849. He gained his M.D. in 1853 and became a Licentiate of the College in the same year. and. Having been named as "first-prize man" in the Anatomy Class, he became a demonstrator of Anatomy under Dr Struthers at the University of Edinburgh, later becoming Resident Physician's Assistant at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
In 1854 he was nominated as one of three young surgeons, alongside Alexander Struthers and Sydney Mason, to be part of a funded mission to assist the Army Hospitals set up around Constantinople during the Crimean War. They were assigned first to the General Hospital at Scutari, but later to the newer and smaller hospital at Kulali. While in Turkey all three contracted Typhus, which caused the deaths of both Struthers and Mason, though Greig recovered through a lengthy convalescence in Therapia.
Following his recovery he was attached to the 17th Regiment as an Assistant Surgeon, which was then undertaking the Siege of Sevastopol. For several months Greig was directly in the line of fire, treating battlefield wounded and sick. When the city finally fell in September 1855, Greig and the 17th Regiment were moved to a brief campaign on the Kinburn Spit at the mouth of the Dnepr River. There they destroyed the forts guarding the entrance to the river before returning to the Crimea. Between this and the re-establishment of peace in 1856, Greig served on the Army's Pathology Board, set up to conduct regular post-mortems on men dying in the Crimea to get a better idea of causes of death on campaign. He served in this role until he returned to the UK on September 1st 1856.
On his return he became a Fellow of the College and returned to practice in Dundee, also becoming an Examiner in Surgery at Aberdeen University in 1878. In 1890, while on a holiday to Egypt, he returned to Scutari and Kulali to visit the graves of his friends and there contracted Typhus again. This time he died, passing away on June 27th 1890. His body was returned to Dundee and buried at the Western Cemetery.
His son, David Middleton Greig (#1224) also followed his father into the surgical profession, becoming a Fellow of the College on April 2nd 1890, just months before his father's death.
