# Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bennet, James Henry

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​BENNET, James Henry, M.D., was born at Manchester in 1816. His father was an influential manufacturer, connected with the discoveries in textile fabrics which marked the beginning of this century, and was the first to obtain a patent for uniting cotton and wool in one fabric, and was the inventor and patentee of the cloth named by him "corduroy." After his father's death his mother took him to Paris to be educated, by the advice of M. Fernaux, an eminent French manufacturer, and a friend of the family. He was placed at a French college ("St. Louis"), and remained there until the age of seventeen. He was then apprenticed in the usual course to Mr. Ormond Tabberer, a maternal uncle, a clever surgeon, practising at Repton, in Derbyshire. With him he remained until the age of twenty, when he returned to Paris for a visit. Finding, through his former college friends, that the Paris medical schools presented very great advantages, he got his uncle to release him from the unexpired years of his apprenticeship, and began his medical studies de novo in the French capital, where he remained for seven years, competing for and gaining every appointment that was open to competition, and also teaching and writing for the medical press. During the last four of these years he was an "Interne des Hôpitaux," or House Physician to the Paris hospitals, an appointment ​gained by an arduous competitive examination. At the age of 27 he left Paris, and settled in London as a consulting physician, choosing midwifery and gynecology, or the diseases of women, as a special branch. He published, in 1845–64, an important work on female diseases, which procured for him at an early age a large and important practice in that department of medicine. In 1869 he became consumptive from hard work, the result of over-success. He was obliged to give up his medical appointment, to resign practice, and to fly for his life to the Genoese Riviera. But freedom from professional anxieties, a mild climate, and rational treatment, effected a cure in the course of a few years, but he has continued to spend his winter ever since at Mentone on the Riviera, only undertaking consulting practice in the summer in London, and residing at his country residence, The Ferns, Weybridge, Surrey, during his sojourn in England. In 1878 he retired entirely from practice in England in summer, but still resides at his country home, The Ferns, and continues to practise in the winter at Mentone. Dr. Bennet has always shown indomitable energy, ever rallying and ever returning to the battle of life, however severely stricken by illness, and by social disasters. He is the author of "A Practical Treatise on Inflammation of the Uterus and its Appendages, and on its Connexion with other Uterine Diseases," 4th edit. 1861; "A Review of the Present State of Uterine Pathology," 1856; "Nutrition in Health and Disease," 3rd edit. 1877; "Nutrition," cheap edition, 1879; second thousand—translated into French by M. Barrué, 1882; "Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean; or, the Rivieras, Italy, Spain, Sardinia, Malta, Corfu, Corsica, Sicily, Algeria, and Tunis, as Winter Climates," 5th edit. 1876; "On the Treatment of Pulmonary Consumption by Hygiene, Climate, and Medicine," 3rd edit. 1878; "Recherches sur le Traitement de la Phthisie Pulmonaire," Paris, 1875; "La Corse et la Sardaigne, Étude de Voyage," Paris, 1876; and "La Mediterranée et la Rivière de Gênes," Paris, 1880.