[1] Born in London, he was educated at Mount Radford School in Exeter,[2] and being destined for the medical profession he entered an apprenticeship with Mr Sedgwick, a surgeon in Maidstone.

[5] During the next two years he studied in Paris (where he founded the English-speaking Medical Society) and then spent two in Germany (mainly at Heidelberg and the Charité Hospital in Berlin), before returning to Edinburgh in 1841 where he published a Treatise on Cod-liver Oil as a Therapeutic Agent.

[3][4] In the same year he began to lecture as an extra-academical teacher on histology, drawing attention to the importance of the microscope in the investigation of disease; and as physician to the Royal Public Dispensary of Edinburgh he instituted courses of polyclinical medicine.

[6] In the same year he was appointed professor of the Institutes of Medicine at Edinburgh, and performed the duties of that chair with great energy until incapacitated by failing health, in 1874.

[citation needed] 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.

[12] His publications were very numerous[13] 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).

[citation needed] A second laboratory with his name was opened in 1998, in a joint venture between Britain's Leukaemia Research Fund, the University of Edinburgh and the Western General Hospital Trust.

[citation needed] On 22 August 1844 Bennett married Jessie Samuel (1824–1906), a niece of the Reverend Alexander Simpson (later moderator of the Church of Scotland).