James Boyd, a son of the manse, was born in Innerleithen, Scotland. He was a house physician at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and joining the Colonial Medical Service in 1913, he was posted to Fiji. With the outbreak of World War I, he resigned and served with the Royal Army Medical Corps for two years, then transferring to the New Zealand Forces in 1916. While serving with the Mounted Division in Mesopotamia, he was awarded the Military Cross.

At the end of World War I he came to New Zealand to enter country general practice at Kaponga, Taranaki in 1919. In 1924, he moved to urban practice in Lower Hutt, also having taken his MRCPE qualification in that year, and from 1926, now appointed an honorary physician to Wellington Hospital, he confined his practice to consulting and hospital medicine. He was elected FRCPE in 1940, having been involved two years previously with the formation of the RACP in New Zealand and becoming a foundation Fellow of the College. From 1933 to 1946, he was senior physician to Wellington Hospital but it is to be remembered that from 1939 to 194,5 he was on military service mainly abroad. On his retirement from the hospital staff he was appointed an honorary consulting physician. His special appointments had included external examiner in medicine, the University of New Zealand. He continued in active consultant practice until July 1952.

During World War II he gave distinguished service as consultant physician for 2nd Division New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) throughout the whole period of hostilities (1939 to 1945), being overseas for nearly the whole period in North Africa and Italy. He was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his conspicuous contribution to the medical welfare of the Expeditionary Force. In the war period he established outstanding communication with higher medical commands in the Royal Army Medical Corps, many of the senior postings being held by fellow students from the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

After a short term back before retirement from the Wellington Hospital staff, his special contributions to clinical medicine, and in particular to undergraduate teaching, were recognised by his colleagues in 1954, with the establishment of the James Boyd Clinical Prize Trust to award an annual prize to the final year student at Wellington Hospital pre-eminent in clinical medicine. It was a most appropriate and indeed an emotive occasion when James Boyd personally gave the first address to the pre-graduands and presented the award, a practice which has since been continued regularly in other hands. Dr Boyd was chief medical officer of the Australian Mutual Provident Society from 1946 to 1956, and his further contribution to life assurance medicine was as chief medical officer and a director for the Dominion Life Assurance Office of New Zealand. He was for many years a director of the New Zealand Medical Assurance Society, and deputy chairman of the New Zealand Medical Benevolent Fund.

On a broad background of consultant medicine, student teaching, life assurance medicine, and service medicine, James Boyd's pre-eminent ability may well have been in bedside consultation when called in to advise general practitioners, surgical specialists and younger physicians. It was the opinion of many colleagues that no one excelled Boyd in this role. His personal examinations and case records were invariably meticulous and orderly, practising as he was in the era of empirical medicine. He was much sought after by colleagues and their families in medical illness. A number of governors-general were among his private patients.

A gregarious man, he entertained special friends regularly in his professional suite on Friday nights, in informal gatherings understood to be essentially fraternal, witty and stimulating. He was a skilled and dedicated gardener, gaining prizes at flower shows with a range of specimens and above all, a specialist and authority in the culture of orchids. He was an experienced and enthusiastic trout fisherman, particularly in browns, and spent time regularly in the season on the rivers in the Wellington area and periodically in the North Wairarapa. He read widely, being a particular admirer of his fellow lowland Scot, Robert Burns, and having some fine editions of the poet's work.

James Boyd was survived by his widow, their marriage being in Scotland in 1913. There were no children. It would be true to say that 25 years after his death, James Roberts Boyd would still be regarded as the outstanding consultant and clinical teacher in medicine in the Wellington scene.