Radcliffe infirmary at Oxford, and Aldrichian professor of clinical medicine in succession to Dr. John Kidd (1776–1851) [q. v.] In 1851 also he was appointed Radcliffe librarian, the library being then in the building now known as the Radcliffe Camera. He resigned the Lee's readership in 1858 upon his nomination to the high post of regius professor of medicine in the university of Oxford and master of Ewelme Hospital. He remained regius professor until 1894, and continued to hold the office of Radcliffe librarian until a few months before his death in 1900. Acland was also a curator of the Oxford University galleries and of the Bodleian library. In 1860 he was elected an honorary student of Christ Church.
Outside Oxford Acland's medical attainments also gained marked recognition. When the General Medical Council was established in 1858 Acland was chosen to represent the university. He continued a member of the council for twenty-nine years, during thirteen of which (1874-87) he was president. He was local secretary of the British Association in 1847 when it met for the second time at Oxford, and in 1868 he was president of the British Medical Association. In 1860 he visited, America as a member of the suite of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and on his return to England was appointed an honorary physician to his royal highness. He was also physician to H. R.H. Prince Leopold, afterwards the Duke of Albany, while he was an undergraduate at Oxford.
Acland was a man of wide sympathies and great versatility, who, by the accidents of time and position, was able to exercise a unique influence on the teaching of medicine and science at Oxford. Entering the university as a teacher while he was still a young man, he found it almost mediaeval in the character of its medical studies and methods. He lived to see the faculty of medicine flourishing, in good repute, and equipped with the latest means of scientific investigation. But he was strongly opposed to the idea of making Oxford merely a medical school in the strictly medical sense. He wished to give every medical graduate of Oxford an opportunity of gaining the wide culture for which the university has long been famed. He maintained that it was the function of the university to give a liberal education in 'arts,' and that all the sciences ancillary to medicine could be well and profitably taught within its walls. He was of opinion, however, that purely professional medical studies could be pursued to greater advantage in the metropolis and other large centres of population than in Oxford. Impressed with these views, and convinced that the whole question of the teaching of natural science in Oxford depended upon their adoption, he strove hard to introduce biology and chemistry into the ordinary curriculum. In this effort he was brilliantly successful in the face of the most determined opposition, and especial credit must be given to him for this success, because others, perhaps equally farsighted, had given up the endeavour in despair and without a struggle in the belief that the project was impossible. To accomplish his end Acland had the good fortune to gather round him such firm friends and strong allies as Dean Liddell, Canon Pusey, Dean Church, Bishop Jacobson, Dean Stanley, and many others, by whose aid success was at last achieved.
During the early years of his tenure of the regius professorship the university was roused from the apathy into which it had fallen as to both the study of modern science, and the teaching of medicine, and Acland devoted the best years of his life to establish on a sound basis a great institution which should encourage research and study in every branch of natural science, especially in relation to the practice of medicine. This institution is now known as the Oxford Museum. In his efforts to bring his scheme to fruition he had the sympathy and aid of his friend Ruskin, who assisted him to obtain, and even made some drawings for, the projected building; and Ruskin contributed to a sketch of the museum's objects, which Acland published under the title of 'The Oxford Museum' in 1859. The foundation-stone of the building was laid on 20 June 1855, and it was opened in 1861. It forms a nucleus which, it is hoped, will ultimately be the centre of a cluster of buildings equipped for the study of the whole realm of nature. In 1862, at Acland's suggestion and on the advice of Sidney Herbert and W. E. Gladstone, the Radcliffe trustees allowed the collections of scientific and medical books which formed the Radcliffe library to be moved from the Radcliffe Camera to the new museum, at the same time increasing the annual grant for the purchase of books. The museum was thus put into possession of a first-rate scientific library.
Acland devoted much time and thought to the subject of state medicine, for he saw early its relation to the morality and well-being not only of this country but of the whole civilised world. In 1869 he served on a royal commission to investigate the sanitary laws in England and Wales, and he wrote at various times a considerable number of pamphlets to show the effect of
