was a prime opponent of Thomas Laycock for the Edinburgh Chair. His obituary refers to this as an "exciting contest". Michalel Barfoot wrote in 1995 that in fact extremely bitter, and became a source of great dissension in subsequent years. Barfoot describes him as having "the personality biographers' dreams are made of", and quotes Bennett's biographer John M'Kendrick as stating that Bennett "regarded his defeat (by Laycock) as the great disappointment of his life, and there is little doubt that it tended to a certain extent to distort his views of men an things". In 1859 he was elected President of the Harveian Society. In 1873, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Medicine and granted recognition by the French government to practice medicine in France. In August 1875 he was able to be present at the meeting of the British Medical Association in Edinburgh, on which occasion he received the degree of LL.D., but the fatigue he then underwent brought on a relapse, and he was compelled to have the operation of lithotomy performed. He sank rapidly and died on 25 September 1875 at Norwich. Bennett died at Norwich on 25 September 1875, nine days after an operation for stone, performed by Mr. Cadge, from which his enfeebled strength did not enable him to recover. He was buried in the Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, on 30 September by the side of his friends Goodsir and Edward Forbes. Works His publications were very numerous including Lectures on Clinical Medicine (1850–1856), which in second and subsequent editions were called Clinical Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, and were translated into various languages, including Russian and Hindi; Leucocythaemia (1852), the first recorded cure of which was published by him in 1845; Outlines of Physiology (1858), reprinted from the 8th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Pathology and Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis (1853); Textbook of Physiology (1871–1872). Because Bennett introduced practical classes in the teaching of physiology, he is considered the father of physiological education in medical schools. He was also the first to teach the clinical use of the microscope systematically and its uses in the teaching of pathology and physiology. He opposed bloodletting and was highly influential in changing medical therapeutics towards a more science-based approach in the second half of the 19th century. He supported the admission of women to medical schools and advocated a better interaction