Camper studied at Leiden with Albinus, and also in London under William Smellie. He was appointed to the medical school at the University of Franeker in Friesland, and subsequently to the Athenæum in Amsterdam, and the University of Groningen. In 1752 he revisited London, where he contributed several drawings to Smellie's A sett of anatomical tables (1754). Camper wrote on a wide range of medical subjects: anatomy, epidemiology and public health, veterinary science, and physical anthropology. He was also an accomplished artist, making his own drawings for his most considerable scientific anatomical work, his Demonstrationum anatomico-pathologicarum. Issued in two parts, the first part contains two very large plates of the upper limb, accompanied with outline drawings, engraved by J. van der Schley. Part 2 has a further three plates, with outline drawings, of the pelvis.