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Winslow (FORBES BENIGNUS an English)

FORBES BENIGNUS, an English alienist; born in London, of a Massachusetts family, in August, 1810; was educated in Scotland and near Manchester, and, after studying medicine at New York and the London University, passed the College of Surgeons (1835), and took his M. D. at Aberdeen. With his earliest practice he combined the duties of a "Times" reporter, but having after 1830 paid special attention to the study of insanity, he opened a private asylum at Hammersmith (later another in London), and rose in time to be the supreme authority on all relating to diseases of the brain. Founder and editor of the "Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology" (1848) and of the "Medical Critic" (1861), vice-president of the Juridical and president of the Medical Society (1853), president of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums (1857), and a Commissioner of Lunacy (1859), he was besides a member of numerous scientific bodies, a frequent contributor to the press, and the great "expert" in medico-legal cases. He published "The Application of Phrenology to the Elucidation and Cure of Insanity" (1831); "Anatomy of Suicide" (1840); "Plea of Insanity in Criminal Cases" (1843); "Notes on the Lunacy Act" (1845); "Softening of the Brain" (1849); "Lettsonian Lectures on Insanity" (1854); "Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Disorders of the Mind" (1860; 4th ed. 1868); "Light, Its Influence on Life and Health" (1867); etc. He died in Brighton, England, March 3, 1874.