Sir William Henry Bennett, KCVO,

FRCS Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons (FRCS) is a professional qualification to practise as a senior surgeon in Ireland or the United Kingdom. It is bestowed on an intercollegiate basis by the four Royal Colleges of Surgeons (the Royal C ...

(1852 – 24 December 1931)BENNETT, Sir William Henry’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 was a British

surgeon In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...

. Bennett was a

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

man, the son of William Francis Bennett, of Chilmark. He held several administrative posts in medical establishments, including at

St George's Hospital St George's Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Tooting, London. Founded in 1733, it is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals and one of the largest hospitals in Europe. It is run by the St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundatio ...

, where he was a senior surgeon. Bennett introduced London doctors to massage as a treatment modality for new fractures in 1898 and he established a department of massage at St. George´s. However, his most important contribution to medical science was a paper in which he introduced the surgical procedure of posterior

rhizotomy ::''This article deals with Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) rather than the rhizotomy procedures for pain relief; for those procedures, which have begun to take the name "rhizotomy" in certain instances, see facet rhizotomy and similar. A face ...

for the relief of spasmodic pain in a lower extremity. He was knighted as a

Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order The Royal Victorian Order (french: Ordre royal de Victoria) is a dynastic order of knighthood established in 1896 by Queen Victoria. It recognises distinguished personal service to the British monarch, Canadian monarch, Australian monarch, or ...

(KCVO) in July 1901, for services rendered to sick and wounded returning from the

Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sou ...

, South Africa, 1900–02, for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Roberts. The following year he was on 8 May 1902 appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in England (KStJ). In 1904, he was listed honorary medical staff at

King Edward VII's Hospital for Officers King Edward VII's Hospital (formal name: King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes) is a private hospital located on Beaumont Street in the Marylebone district of central London. Agnes Keyser, later known as Sister Agnes, established the hospit ...

. During the War 1914–1919 he relinquished all private affairs to take up work with British Red Cross and the Order of St John Bennett married first, in 1882, Isabel Dickinson (died 1911), daughter of Thomas Dickinson. After his first wife´s death, he married second, in 1914, Gladys Florence Stewart Hartigan, daughter of Rev. Allen S. Hartigan

Notes and references

* Bennett, William H. (1889), ''A case in which acute spasmodic pain in the left lower extremity was completely relieved by subdural division of the posterior roots of certain spinal nerves, all other treatment having proved useless; death from sudden collapse and cerebral hæmorrhage on the twelfth day after the operation at the commencement.'' Journal: ''Medical Chirurgical Transactions,'' vol. 72, pp. 329–48. * Morton, Leslie T. (1970), ''A medical bibliography (Garrison and Morton).'' Philadelphia & Toronto: J. B. Lippincott Company, p. 559. * Wilkins, Robert H. (1992), ''Neurosurgical Classics.'' New York: Thieme Medical Publishers, p. 129.

External links

University of California Libraries
Internet copy of Bennett's 1910 edition of: ''Lectures on the use of massage. . .'' etc. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, William H. 1852 births 1931 deaths British surgeons Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons