ABSTRACT
Forbes Benigus Winslow (1810–74) studied medicine at University College and Middlesex Hospital, where he was a student of the Charles Bell (1774–1842), a pioneer in neuroanatomical studies of the brain and nervous system. Winslow’s early interests gravitated towards the study of mental influences upon the body, with papers read before the Westminster Medical Society in 1839, ‘On the Influence of the Mind on Disease’ and ‘Suicide Medically Considered’, the paper which formed the basis for The Anatomy of Suicide. Critical reception of Winslow’s Anatomy was mixed. Among the medical press, the Medico-Chirurgical Review was the most generous, praising it as a ‘volume which does infinite credit to the head and the heart of the author’. The Anatomy of Suicide did not, however, find a more hospitable reception from less specialized periodicals.
