BELL, SIR CHARLB& 



BELL, SIR CHARLES. 



of civil jtutica in Sootian.1. In 18S3 he WM appointed by Lord 

 Melbourne, chairman of another gratuitous royal coiuuiisiiun, which was 

 afterwards twice renewed, and from their investigations and report*, 

 the recent improTemeoU in the law* of Scotland bar* bean darired. 



In 1621 Mr. BU waa appointed Professor of the Law of Scotland 

 in MM Onirerwiy of Edinburgh, and in 1881 a prioci[<al Cl-rk of 

 He had married in 1804 Barbara, daughter of Charles Shaw, 



Eso_ who predeoaaMd him. He died at Park Place, Edinburgh, 

 o the SSrJ of September 1843, tearing eight children. One of 

 hi. aooa. George Joseph Bell, Jun., held the Radclifib Travelling 

 Fellowship of Oxford. He wan an eminent scholar, an accomplished 

 artist, and an M.B. of Oxford. For three years he was physician to 

 her Britannic Majesty's mission to Persia, where ho receired from the 

 Shah the order of the Lion and San, for his distinguished medical 

 emiiuea. His health suffered from the climate, and on his way home 

 he died, unmarried, at Kncrum, on the 12th of May 1847, in the 

 thirty-seventh year of his age. 



8< CBABUH BELL was born at Edinburgh in 1774. Charles, being 

 the youngest brother, did not receive quite the same academical 

 advantage* of education as his brothers, in consequence of the death 

 of his father when he was very yonng. But as he himself said well 

 in sficr-life, " My education was the example set me by my brothers;" 

 and most gratefully be always acknowledged the lessons which his 

 mother bestowed on him, her favourite child. At the High School of 

 Kdinburgh Charles made no marked figure. It was under the eye of 

 bis brother John, whose profession he had adopted, that he first gave 

 evidence of his great talents. He became a first rate anatomist, and 

 lectured to some hundred pupils on that science while comparatively 

 a boy. His internal consciousness of ability, however, and the ambition 

 iaeepsrshls from it, led him to long for increased opportunities of 

 exertion, and in the year 1804, at the age of thirty, he removed to 

 London. Perhaps the bitter dissensions then raging in the* Edinburgh 

 Medical School, in which his brother John was deeply involved, had 

 tome effect in prompting him to this escape to a new scene. 



At the outset, the prejudices then prevalent against Scotsmen, seem 

 to have stood in the way of Charles Bell in London, but he overcame 

 them in time, and became intimate with Sir Astley Cooper, Abernethy, 

 and other great surgeons of the day. His work on the ' Anatomy of 

 Expression,' published in 1806, did much to give him a name in 

 London ; and most deservedly so, that treatise being acknowledged by 

 Wilkie, and many illustrious painters, as having deeply influenced 

 their own studies and practice in drawing the human figure. Never- 

 theless, though advancing by alow yet sure degrees as an operative 

 practitioner, Bell was forced to begin lecturing in a very humble way, 

 having yet obtained no aid from association nor any connection with 

 the chief medical schools. In the same year (1807) in which he 

 entered on this course, he published the first edition of his 'System 

 of Operative Surgery,' a work which was rendered valuable by it* 

 practical character : no single operation was described theoretically, 

 but all from full personal experience ; and it is still one of the most 

 useful work* on the subject. At this period, in some beautiful letters 

 to bis brother George Joseph Bell, he describes the dawning upon his 

 mind of those discoveries in the nervous system, which will form his 

 noblest monument in the judgment of posterity. But he also grieves 

 most bitterly, in this correspondence, over the neglect with which the 

 public, generally, treated these early speculation*. We may once for 

 all observe, regarding this aerie* of fraternal letters, that If no oth< 

 proof of the writer's genius existed, they would form in themselves 

 satisfactory testimony to his abilities. His frequent aspirations "to 

 be chief of hi* profession in character" indicate a man of no common 

 tamp. 



In 1811 he married Marion, daughter of Charles Shaw, Esq., o 

 Ayr, a la-ly who brought happiness to his hearth, and several of whose 

 relative* became eminent in their various department*. To Alexande 

 Sbaw, also a cnrgeon, we owe an able vindication of the ju>t claims 

 of Bell in the field of anatomical and physiological discovery. In th 

 same year (1311) Bell became connected with the Hunterian Schoo 

 in Windmill-street ; and in 1814 he was appointed surgeon to th 

 Middlesex Hospital, an institution which he subsequently raised to th 

 highest repute, and which he justly boasts, in 1838, of leaving " with 

 foil ward., and 1JO.OOOJ. in the fund*," It was both from his extra 

 ordinary skill a* an operator, and from his style of lecturing-whieh 

 though not especially eloquent, was striking and suggestive that hi 

 labours were crowned with success, both as regards the patients an 

 the pupils of the Middlesex Hospital 



B*n had early distinguished himself as a scientific surgeon and 

 adroit operator. He had been much engrossed by the consideratio 

 of cases in military surgery, when our wounded troops came horn 

 from Spain. The battle of Waterloo revived his enthusiasm in thi 

 branch of his art; he visited the battle-field immediately after the 

 battle, and was of great service to the wounded. 



In 18>1 BalT* first paper on the Nervous System ' wa< read before 

 the Royal Society, and published in the ' Philosophical Transactions. 

 It attracted immediate attention all over Europe, and the value o 

 his discover!** bring recognised, many came forward to claim them 

 d contest their originality. It was easy to prove however Umt h 

 had been in th. habit of teaching these doctrine* for many years to 

 t*1**, * hi* TWw had Hem explained hi a paper written 10 far 



tack as 1810, of which 150 copies, privately printed, were circulated 

 among his friends. 



The older anatomist* believed (A nerve* alike capable of conveying 

 motion and sensation the essence of Bell's discovery was that every 

 erve has a distinct function according to the part of the brain or 

 itnsl marrow with which it is connected. Although sometimes as 

 isny as three different nerve* are bound up together In the same 

 aeath, for convenience of distribution to the organs they are intended 

 to supply, and though after they have become thus united it is Impos- 

 sible to distinguish one fibril from another, yet at their connections 

 with the brain and spinal marrow their several roots arc quite distinct, 

 [e showed that those roots which are connected with the back part 

 f the spinal marrow are all nerve* of feeling, and incapable of giving 

 tower of motion to the muscles, in short that they are the beam* of 

 nesssges from the body to the brain : whereas all the roots of nerves 

 connected with the front, or anterior column of the spinal marrow 

 and that portion of the brain connected with it are nerves of voluntary 

 motion only, and the messengers of the will to the body. He farther 

 iscovered that there are nerves which arise from a portion of the 

 rain and spinal marrow intermediate between the sensitive and the 

 motor tract of nervous matter, whose office it is to regulate the 

 nvoluutary motions connected with respiration and the expression of 

 the passions. In like manner the nerves of the special senses, seeing, 

 melling, and hearing, enter distinct portions of the brain that form as 

 much parts of the organs of these senses as the eye, nose, or ear. Such 

 w the general, outline of his discoveries, which opened up to the 

 anatomist and the naturalist hitherto concealed avenues to knowledge, 

 and afforded a guide, previously wanting, to the surgeon in his opera- 

 tions ; and rescued the whole treatment of nervous disorders from the 

 dominion of mere empiricism. 



Before quitting this subject in which Bell may be named as a 

 discoverer equal even with Harvey we ought to point to one of the 

 practical inferences from his own views, which establishes the existence 

 >f a sixth sense that by which we attain our knowledge of distance, 

 size, weight, form, texture, and resistance of object*. Two of his 

 says, ' On the Nervous Circle,' and ' On the Eye,' have reference to 

 this theory. The basis of it is, that the nerves of sensation play the 

 yut of reporters on the motor nerves, and indicate to the central 

 ieats of perception the condition of things within the influence of 

 hese nerves, thus forming the sixth or muscular sense. 



Numerous were the hints which the genius of Bell threw out to the 

 profession about this time, in lectures and short essays. The operation 

 For the cure of squinting, for example, by division of the contracted 

 muscle of the orbit, hod occurred to him long before it was thought 

 of by the German who now has the credit of the discovery, as letters 

 before us fully prove. The existence of a vital attraction betwixt the 

 solids and fluids of the body was also an idea of Bell. But his disco- 

 veries on the nerves certainly established bin reputation. In 1834 the 

 London College of Surgeons offered to him their senior choir of 

 anatomy and surgery, which he accepted; and his lectures, which 

 were received with great applause, formed the basis of a work entitled 

 1 Animal Mechanics,' published in 1828-29, by the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Two other works, which combine 

 high scientific knowledge with such a popularisation of the subjects 

 as fitted them to ordinary capacities, followed soon afterwards ; the 

 one is the ' Bridgewater Treatise on the Hand,' and the other ' Illus- 

 trations of Paley's Natural Theology,' an accompaniment to Lord 

 Brougham's work on that subject Yu the meantime Bell was in the 

 first rank of hi* profession, and had an ample attendance on hi* 

 lectures, not only of pupils, but of men his seniors in practice. On 

 the continent he was even more highly esteemed. Cuvicr, Larrey, and 

 other illustrious men of science, vied with one another in testifying 

 their admiration of his talent* and his labours. On the accession of 

 \Villi:im IV. he was one of those selected for the honour of knighthood 

 with Herschel, Brewster, and others. When the London University 

 (now University College) was established, he was offered the chair of 

 Physiology, and he accepted the offer; but after a short period he 

 gave in us resignation. For some time subsequently, he chiefly 

 pursued his private professional practice, with a reputation firmly 

 established. He had still the some ardent desire, which was the passion 

 of his youth, to prosecute experimental physiology ; and, accordingly, 

 when an offer of the chair of Surgery in the Edinburgh University was 

 made to him, he accepted it, though after much doubt and reluctance, 

 His regret at quitting hi* London friends was great, but it was over- 

 balanced by the hope of spending his latter yean happily among those 

 friends who had been dear to bis youth, and still more so by the 

 expectation of being again placed in a position to renew with effect his 

 scientific studies. 



Sir Charles Bell removed to Edinburgh in 1836. having been absent 

 thirty-two yean. Hi* opening lecture as Surgical Professor was bril- 

 liantly attended by professional and non-professional men of eminence ; 

 and the conduct of hi* class fulfilled all th* high anticipations he hod 

 formed respecting it. He had "meditated a splendid work ou the 

 Nervous System, but ho did not find means for its accomplishment ; 

 and the only great work which he did finish was a new edition of his 

 ' Anatomy of Expression,' largely increased and improved by his obser- 

 vations on an Italian journey undertaken by him in one of the intervals 

 betwixt hit sessions at college. In the su'niuer of 1842 Sir Charles 



