author
Alexander Hughes Bennett
1848–1901
A pioneering 19th-century physician, he helped shape early neurology and is especially remembered for diagnosing the brain tumor in the case that led to the first successful primary brain-tumor removal. His work also explored epilepsy and the medical use of electricity in nervous-system disease.
1 Audiobook
A Statistical Inquiry Into the Nature and Treatment of Epilepsy
by Alexander Hughes Bennett
About the author
Born in 1848, he was the only son of the noted physician John Hughes Bennett and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1869. After hospital appointments in Edinburgh and London and further study in London and Paris, he built his career around diseases of the nervous system.
He became known for careful clinical observation and for writing on epilepsy, neurology, and electro-diagnosis. Contemporary accounts describe him as particularly interested in using electricity to help diagnose nervous disorders, and his published work helped bring those methods to a wider medical audience.
He is most often remembered for the famous 1884 brain-tumor case in which he correctly localized the lesion from neurological signs, leading surgeon Rickman Godlee to perform what is widely described as the first successful primary removal of a brain tumor. He died in 1901, leaving a reputation as an able and original clinician whose career was limited by poor health.