John Hughes Bennett
| John Hughes Bennett | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 31 August 1812 |
| Died | 25 September 1875 (aged 63) |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Exeter |
| Alma mater | Edinburgh |
| Occupation | physician, pathologist |
| Known for | leukemia |
John Hughes Bennett PRCPE FRSE (31 August 1812 – 25 September 1875) was an English physician, physiologist and pathologist. His main contribution to medicine has been the first description of leukemia as a blood disorder (1845). The first person to describe leukemia as an unknown disease was Alfred François Donné.
Bennett was the first doctor to describe aspergillosis. In his seminal paper published in 1842 entitled "On the parasitic vegetable structures found growing in living animals" he makes the very first description of aspergillus (a pathogenic fungus) growing in the lung tissue of humans.
Born in London, he was educated at Mount Radford School in Exeter, and being destined for the medical profession he entered an apprenticeship with Mr Sedgwick, a surgeon in Maidstone. In 1833 he began his studies at Edinburgh, and in 1837 graduated with the highest honours and a gold medal, with a dissertation entitled The Physiology and Pathology of the Brain. During his last year at Edinburgh he was elected President of the Royal Medical Society, Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, and a vice-president of the Anatomical and Physiological Society.
During the next two years he studied in Paris (where he founded the English-speaking Medical Society) and then spent two in Germany (mainly at Heidelberg and the Charité Hospital in Berlin), before returning to Edinburgh in 1841 where he published a Treatise on Cod-liver Oil as a Therapeutic Agent. In the same year he began to lecture as an extra-academical teacher on histology, drawing attention to the importance of the microscope in the investigation of disease; and as physician to the Royal Public Dispensary of Edinburgh he instituted courses of polyclinical medicine. In 1843 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his proposer being Sir Robert Christison. His address was then listed as 1 Glenfinlas Street, just off Charlotte Square. In the same year he was appointed professor of the Institutes of Medicine at Edinburgh, and performed the duties of that chair with great energy until incapacitated by failing health, in 1874.
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