Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell Edinburgh University (1836–42) | |
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Author of "Treatise on Animal Mechanics", "An Essay on the Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design" |
Sir Charles Bell
His three older brothers included Robert Bell (1757–1816) a
Early life and education
Charles Bell was born in
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.[6] Furthermore, Bell used his clinical experience and artistic eye to develop the hobby of modelling 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.[7]
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:
Professional career
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 was among a number of civilian surgeons who volunteered to attend to the many thousands of ill and wounded soldiers who had retreated to Corunna, and 6 years later he again voluntarily attended to the ill and wounded in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. Regrettably, of Bell's 12 amputation cases, only one man survived.[9] 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.[10]
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 Brussels, was critical of Bell's surgical skills and commented rather negatively on Bell's surgical abilities; (the mortality rate of amputations carried out by Bell ran at about 90%).
Bell was instrumental in the creation of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and became, in 1824, the first professor of Anatomy and Surgery of the College of Surgeons in London. In that same year Bell sold his collection of over 3,000 wax preparations to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for £3000.
In 1829, the Windmill Street School of Anatomy was incorporated into the new King's College London. Bell was invited to be its first professor of physiology, and helped establish the Medical School at the University of London, gave the inaugural address when it formally opened, and even helped contribute to the requirements of its certification program.[11] Bell's stay at the Medical School did not last long and he resigned from his chair due to differences of opinion with the academic staff. For the next seven years, Bell gave clinical lectures at the Middlesex Hospital and in 1835 he accepted the position of the Chair of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh[12] following the premature death of Prof John William Turner.[13]
He was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1833.[citation needed]
Bell died at Hallow Park near Worcester in the Midlands, while travelling from Edinburgh to London, in 1842.[14]
He is buried in Hallow Churchyard near Worcester.[15]
Honours and awards
Bell was elected a
He was elected a
Works
Charles Bell was a prolific author who combined his anatomical knowledge with his artistic eye to produce a number of highly detailed and beautifully illustrated books. In 1799, Bell published his first work "A System of Dissections, explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body, the manner of displaying Parts and their Varieties in Disease". His second work was the completion of his brother's four-volume set of "The Anatomy of the Human Body" in 1803. In that same year, Bell published his three series of engravings titled "Engravings of the Arteries", "Engravings of the Brain", and "Engravings of the Nerves". These sets of engravings consisted of intricate and detailed anatomical diagrams accompanied with labels and a brief description of their functionality in the human body and were published as an educational tool for aspiring medical students. The "Engravings of the Brain" are of particular importance for this marked Bell's first published attempt at fully elucidating the organization of the nervous system. In his introduction to the work, Bell comments on the ambiguous nature of the brain and its inner workings, a topic that would hold his interest for the remainder of his life.[17]
In 1806, with his eye on a teaching post at the
Bell published detailed studies of the
Despite this lukewarm response, Charles Bell continued to study the anatomy of the human brain and laid his focus upon the nerves connected to it. In 1821, Bell published the "On the Nerves: Giving an Account of some Experiments on Their Structure and Functions, Which Lead to a New Arrangement of the System" in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This paper held Bell's most famous discovery, that the facial nerve or seventh cranial nerve is a nerve of muscular action. This was quite an important discovery because surgeons would often cut this nerve as an attempted cure for facial neuralgia, but this would often render the patient with a unilateral paralysis of the facial muscles, now known as Bell's Palsy.[20] Due to this publication, Charles Bell is regarded as one of the first physicians to combine the scientific study of neuroanatomy with clinical practice.
Bell's studies on emotional expression played a catalytic role in the development of Darwin's considerations of the origins of human emotional life; and, while he rejected Bell's theological arguments, Darwin very much agreed with Bell's emphasis on the expressive role of the muscles of respiration. Darwin detailed these opinions in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), written with the active collaboration of the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne. Bell was one of the first physicians to combine the scientific study of neuroanatomy with clinical practice. In 1821, he described in the trajectory of the
Bell also combined his many artistic, scientific, literary and teaching talents in a number of wax preparations and detailed anatomical and surgical illustrations, paintings and engravings in his several books on these subjects, such as in his book Illustrations of the Great Operations of Surgery: Trepan, Hernia, Amputation, Aneurism, and Lithotomy (1821). He wrote also the first treatise on notions of anatomy and physiology of facial expression for painters and illustrators, titled Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting (1806).
In 1829, Francis Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, died and in his will, he left a large sum of money to the President of the Royal Society of London. The will stipulated that the money was to be used to write, print, and publish one thousand copies of a work on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God. The President of the Royal Society, Davies Gilbert appointed eight gentlemen to write separate treatises on the subject. In 1833, he published the fourth
Legacy
A number of discoveries received his name:
- Bell's (external respiratory) nerve: The long thoracic nerve.
- idiopathic paralysis of facial muscles due to a lesion of the facial nerve.
- orbicularis oculi (e.g. Guillain–Barré syndrome or Bell's palsy), as the eyelid remains elevated when the patient tries to close the eye.[23][24]
- Bell's spasm: Involuntary twitching of the facial muscles.
- Bell–Magendie law or Bell's Law: States that the anterior branch of spinal nerve roots contain only motor fibers and the posterior roots contain only sensory fibers.[25]
Charles Bell House, part of University College London, is used for teaching and research in surgery.[26]
References
- ^ hdl:2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t4th8dz6z.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - PMID 15235222. Archived from the originalon 24 September 2015.
- PMID 17680840.
- ^ PMID 21267589.
- ^ Gray, James (1952). History of the Royal Medical Society 1737–1937. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 91, 166.
- .
- ^ "Key Collection Page - Surgeons' Hall Museums, Edinburgh". museum.rcsed.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 October 2019.
- ISBN 9780226280424.
- PMC 1276004.
- PMID 17680840.
- S2CID 145787939.
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal Jan 1836
- ^ Team, National Records of Scotland Web (31 May 2013). "National Records of Scotland". National Records of Scotland. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 September 2015. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ [1] Archived 25 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- .
- S2CID 52133460.(subscription required)
- PMID 17230788.
- ^ hdl:2027/miun.agq7673.0001.001.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - .
- ^ Bell, Charles (1833). The Hand, Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design. London: William Pickering.
- ^ Video demonstrating Bell's Phenomenon. OPD Mayo Hospital Lahore.
- PMID 11693144.
- The Modern Home Physician, A New Encyclopedia of Medical Knowledge. WM. H. Wise & Company (New York)., p. 92.
- ^ "Charles Bell House". UCL. Retrieved 8 October 2016.
Further reading
- Bell, C., The Hand. Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design; Bridgewater Treatises, W. Pickering, 1833 (reissued by ISBN 978-1-108-00088-8)
- Berkowitz, Carin. Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
External links
- Sir Charles Bell engravings – Anatomia 1522–1867 digital collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
- Works by Charles Bell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)