Bennet Dowler

Bennet Dowler (1797-1879) was a medical doctor and physiologist of the United States.

Biography Dowler was born in Moundsville, Virginia, and received an M.D. from the medical school of the University of Maryland. He settled in Clarksburg, Virginia, where he was postmaster for four years.

In 1836, he settled in New Orleans, where he founded the Academy of Sciences, and for some years edited The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. His many experiments upon the condition of the human body immediately after death resulted in valuable discoveries in contractibility, calorification, and capillary circulation.

He was a fellow and founder of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquities, Copenhagen, a permanent member of the American Medical Association, and was one of the founders of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences.

Selected works

Dowler wrote articles and treatises on a variety of topics, some controversial. Several of his works have been digitized by the National Library of Medicine:

Contributions to experimental physiology: showing that the ligation of the trachea, the divisions of the spinal cord in the cervical and dorsal regions, the removal of the viscera ... do not prevent intelligence, sensation, and motions (1852)

(1846)

A response to a professor and a speculation on the sensorium (1850)

Researches on the natural history of death (1850)

Tableau of the yellow fever of 1853: with topographical, chronological, and historical sketches of the epidemics of New Orleans since their origin in 1796, illustrative of the quarantine question (1854)