BELL AND MAGENDIE 53 



Bell and Magendie: One of the greatest names in connection 

 with the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system is that of 

 Sir Charles Bell. In fact, his discovery has been placed in importance 

 in the satne efess as that of William Harvey. Charles Bell was bom 

 at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1774. After graduating from the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh he began the study of medicine under his elder 

 brother John, who had already achieved distinction as anatomist. 

 After graduating he devoted himself to anatomy and surgery. He 

 eventually moved to London, where he worked into a very lucrative 

 surgical practice. His first published work (1798) bore the cumber- 

 some title ,and it was the custom of writers of the time to preface 

 their work with a sentence descriptive of its contents, of "A System 

 of Dissections Explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body, the 

 Manner of Displaying its parts and their varieties in Disease.*' Four 

 years later Bell published a series of engravings of original drawings 

 showing the brain and nervous ^stem. His drawings are worthy of 

 special mention. His skill as anatomical artist rivaled that of anato- 

 mist. He was also the author of a work entitled "The Anatomy of 

 Expression," the object of which was to describe the arrangement 

 by which the influence of the mind is propagated to the musculature 

 of the face and to give a rational explanation of the muscular move- 

 ments which accompany the various emotions and passions. He 

 emphasized to the physician and surgeon the importance of a 

 knowledge of facial expression in diagnosis, to ascertain the nature 

 and extent of bodily suffering. In these days of the clinical labora- 

 tory and multifarous other clinical methods, the ability to make a 

 diagnosis by observation alone which amounted to intuition with the 

 old-time clinicians, is a lost art. This work, which was illustrated 

 by himself, had a wide circulation in his day. 



Charles Bell's most important work, however, was the discovery 

 of the double system of nerves Issuing from the spinal cord. He dis- 

 covered that in the nerve trunks are special sensory filaments to 

 transmit impressions from the periphery of the body to the sen- 

 sorium and motor filaments to convey motor-impressions from the 

 brain or other nerve centres to muscle. He demonstrated that the / 

 anterior roots of the spinal cord were motor and the posterior roots/ 

 sensory. 



While in London, he was Professor of Anatomy, Physiology and 

 Surgery in the College of Surgeons. He was knighted by William 

 IV. He returned to Edinburgh 1836 where he became professor of 

 anatomy and surgery. His name is associated with the disease 

 which he was the first to accurately describe, paralysis of the sev- 

 enth nerve— "Bell's Palsy.*' He died in 1842. 



A name of only less importance than that of Sir Charles Bell is 

 that of Magendie. Magendie has been considered the greatest phy- 

 sician France had produced down to his day. His work on physiology 

 written while in his early thirties was almost immediately translated 

 into English and German. It was a valuable work, inasmuch as it \ 

 was based upon experimentation. He was the first continental in- 

 vestigator to discover therfimction of the spinal nerves, and accord- 

 ing to Gorton, contributed more to the knowledge of the nervous 

 system than any of his distinguished predecessors. Magendie was 



