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John Preston Maxwell was born on 5 Dec 1871 in Birmingham, where his father, Dr James Laidlaw Maxwell, practised medicine.
He attended University College School, Hampstead and University College London, before taking his clinical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, from which he emerged with a gold medal in obstetrics and went on to work as a resident at St Bartholomew's.
Then, following his devout Presbyterian faith, Maxwell became a Medical missionary for the English Presbyterian Church and, in about 1898, went to Yungchun Hospital at Fujian in China, where he spent the majority of his professional life. He specialised in obstetrics and was a leading authority on foetal osteomalacia. He became a Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Peking Union Medical College (a teaching hospital funded by the Rockefeller Foundation), President of the Chinese Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and worked as secretary to the medical committee of the Lord Mayor's Fund for the Relief of Distress in China. He was awarded the Army and Navy Medal by the Chinese Republic and was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929.
Maxwell returned to England at some point after 1935 (possibly as a result of the invasion of Beijing by the Japanese in 1937) and lived at Brinkley in Cambridgeshire. He was elected consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the nearby Newmarket General Hospital. He married and had one daughter; his wife, Lilly (who, as a proficient artist, illustrated some of her husband's research papers), predeceased him. John Preston Maxwell died suddenly near his home on 25 Jul 1961, at the age of 89.