Having received his medical registration in 1944, he began working as a general practitioner in the Sydney suburb of Carlton.
[3] Fifteen years later he passed the Royal Australasian College of Physicians examination and became a consultant doctor specialising in gastroenterology at St. George Hospital in Kogarah.
[1] He had a passion for Spain that dated from his early years when he had learned to speak Spanish, and over a period of 30 years he collected 1,100 copies of Miguel de Cervantes' literary masterpiece Don Quixote in 39 languages, both in the original Spanish[5] and in "every ... significant English translation",[6] as well as a number of illustrated editions[7] of the novel, together with another thousand works on Cervantes.
[9] The biennial Ben Haneman Memorial Lecture is presented jointly by the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine and the State Library of New South Wales.
[1] He died on 18 December 2001 in Darlinghurst, New South Wales following a fall the day before in the State Library.