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brilliant sons, and as one whose researches in sciences ancillary to 

 medicine have advanced these sciences, and contributed to the 

 progress of physiology and cognate sciences. 



Sir CHARLES BELL. 



1778-1842. 



THE name of Bell is very familiar in the medical history of 

 Edinburgh. Bell was born in Edinburgh — " Scotia's darling 

 seat" — where he took the diploma of the College of 

 Surgeons, assisted his brother John, more especially in illustrating 

 his work on anatomy, for Charles was a most accomplished artist and 

 draughtsman. He was surgeon to the Royal Infirmary in 1799, a 

 post he held until 1806, when a dispute — which we need not refer 

 to here — led him to go to London, at a time when Clive and 

 Abernethy were distinguished lecturers. 



Bell joined the famous Windmill School of Medicine, in which 

 the Hunters had achieved fame. 



His investigation on respiratory nerves, the effects of section of 

 other nerves, paralysis of the seventh nerve, " Bell's paralysis," the 

 doctrine of the "muscular sense" are part and parcel of modern 

 physiology. Bell was an artist both with pen and pencil. There is 

 a charm about his style of writing, and his artistic powers were such, 

 that had he not become a great surgeon, he had both the ability and 

 the artistic sense to have become a great artist. He wrote one of the 

 Bridgeivater Treatises on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, 

 as Manifested in Creation — The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital 

 Endowments as Evincing Design. His artistic powers also found 

 expression in his Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting 

 (1806), of which several editions have been published. 



In 1812 he was elected surgeon to Middlesex Hospital. He 

 saw military surgery after Corunna (1809), and in Brussels after 

 Waterloo (1815). In 1836 he was invited to accept the Chair of 

 Surgery in Edinburgh University, and he returned to his native 

 city. Leaving aside his work On the Hand, and others on similar 

 lines, in support of the theology of Paley, and also his surgical 

 works — the essay in which his name is indelibly associated with the 

 nervous system was published in 1811, privately printed for 

 distribution among his friends, Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain. 



" Sir Charles Bell first conceived the ingenious idea that the posterior roots of the 

 spinal nerves, which have upon them a ganglion, are the source of sensation ; the anterior 

 roots the source of motion ; and that the primitive fibres of these roots after their union 

 are mingled in one trunk, and thus distributed for the supply of the skin and muscles. 



