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Dr John Hunter Gibson qualified in Edinburgh but worked for most of his life in the slums of Bombay where he witnessed the full horrors of opium addiction, leading him to write his influential book, The Opium Peril, published 1925 by S.W. Partridge & Co Ltd. London. He was seventy-five when his only son, Miles, was born in 1947.

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The only known photograph of Dr John Hunter Gibson dated 1898 Bombay. No photograph of Miles Gibson exists.

Gibson was born on the Bombay Night Mail, the son of a Scottish doctor and an Indian temple dancer. An opium addict for most of his life he began writing after an episode of violent hallucinations while trekking alone in the Mexican desert. He was found wandering, naked and dehydrated by a small band of natural healers of the Shoshonean people who were in the desert searching for roots and medicinal herbs. They purged Gibson in a sweat lodge and the visions he experienced were so intense that he never touched drugs again. He returned to India upon the death of his mother and now lives in Benares where he writes erotic verse and collects traditional Hindustani folk songs.

The birth announcement of Miles Gibson from the Times of India dated 10th February 1947, only six months before Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy, granted India full Independence, plunging the nation into civil war.