LRCS Edin 1808; MD Glasgow 1820; LRCP Lond 1825, FRCP 1860; MRCS.
Black was surgeon to the Royal Navy until 1815 when he settled in Bolton. From 1838 to 1848 he was based in Manchester where he was lecturer on Forensic Medicine at Manchester Royal School of Medicine and senior physician at Manchester Union Hospital. Black was a member of Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and in 1842 was president of the BMA. In 1848 he returned to Bolton where he was physician to Bolton Infirmary and then moved to Edinburgh in 1856.