Sir Charles Bell KH FRS FRSE FRCSE MWS was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord. He is also noted for describing Bell's palsy.
His three older brothers included Robert Bell (1757–1816) a Writer to the Signet, John Bell (1763–1820), also a noted surgeon and writer; and the advocate George Joseph Bell (1770–1843) who became a professor of law at the University of Edinburgh and a principal clerk at the Court of Session.
Charles Bell was born in Edinburgh on 12 November 1774, as the fourth son of the Reverend William Bell, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Charles's father died in 1779 when he was five years old, and thus his mother had a profound influence on his early life teaching him how to read and write. In addition to this, his mother also helped Charles’s natural artistic ability by paying for his regular drawing and painting lessons from David Allan, a well-known Scottish painter. Charles Bell grew up in Edinburgh, and attended the prestigious High School (1784-8). Although he was not a particularly good student, Charles decided to follow in his brother John’s footsteps and enter a career in medicine. In 1792, Charles Bell enrolled at the University of Edinburgh and began assisting his brother John as a surgical apprentice. While at the university, Bell attended the lectures of Dugald Stewart on the subject of spiritual philosophy. These lectures had considerable impact on Bell, for some of Stewart’s teachings can be traced in Bell’s later works in a passage on his Treatise on the Hand. In addition to classes on anatomy, Bell took a course on the art of drawing in order to refine his artistic skill. At the university he was also a member of the Royal Medical Society as a student and spoke at the Society's centenary celebrations in 1837.
In 1798, Bell graduated from the University of Edinburgh and soon after was admitted to the Edinburgh College of Surgeons where he taught anatomy and operated at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. While developing his talents as a surgeon, Bell’s interests forayed into a field combining anatomy and art. His inherent talent as an artist came to the fore when he helped his brother complete a four-volume work called The Anatomy of the Human Body. Charles Bell completely wrote and illustrated volumes 3 and 4 in 1803, as well as publishing his own set of illustrations in a System of Dissections in 1798 and 1799. Furthermore, Bell uses his clinical experience and his artistic eye to develop the hobby of modeling interesting medical cases in wax. He proceeded to accumulate an extensive collection that he dubbed his Museum of Anatomy, some items of which can still be seen today at Surgeon’s Hall.
Charles Bell’s stay in Edinburgh did not last long due to an infamous feud between John Bell and two faculty members at the University of Edinburgh: Alexander Monro Secundus and John Gregory. John Gregory was the chairman of the Royal Infirmary and had declared that only six full-time surgical staff members would be appointed to work at the infirmary. The Bell brothers were not selected and thus barred from practicing medicine at the Royal Infirmary. Charles Bell, who was not directly involved in his brother’s feuds, attempted to make a deal with the faculty of the University of Edinburgh by offering the university one hundred guineas and his Museum of Anatomy in exchange for allowing him to observe and sketch the operations performed at the Royal Infirmary, but this deal was rejected.[citation needed]
In 1804, Charles Bell left for London and in 1805 had established himself in the city by buying a house on Leicester Street. From this house Bell taught classes in anatomy and surgery for medical students, doctors, and artists. In 1809, Bell volunteered to attend to the British troops wounded at Corunna and was one of the few civilian surgeons to do so. Bell primarily attended to amputees but was not very successful in his amputation surgeries, producing a 92% mortality rate. In addition to the amputation surgeries, Bell was quite fascinated by musket-ball injuries and in 1814, he published a Dissertation on Gunshot Wounds. A number of his illustrations of the wounds are displayed in the hall of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
In 1811, Charles Bell married Marion Shaw. Using money from his wife's dowry, Bell purchased a share of the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy which had been founded by the anatomist William Hunter. Bell transferred his practice from his house to the Windmill Street School Bell ended up teaching students and conducting his own research until 1824. In 1813-14, he was appointed as a member of the London College of Surgeons and as a surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital.
In addition to his domestic pursuits, Bell also served as a military surgeon, making elaborate recordings of neurological injuries at the Royal Hospital Haslar and famously documenting his experiences at Waterloo in 1815. For three consecutive days and nights, he operated on French soldiers in the Gens d'Armerie Hospital. The condition of the French soldiers was quite poor, and thus many of his patients died shortly after he operated on them. Dr. Robert Knox, who was one of Bell’s surgical assistants at Brussells, was quite critical of Bell’s surgical skills. He commented very negatively on Bell's surgical abilities; (the mortality rate of amputations carried out by Bell ran at about 90%).

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