burgh, where he was appointed surgeon to the Infirmary. He was the author of one of the most successful and generally used works on surgery, entitled "A System of Surgery," in seven volumes. It was not only used as a text-book in Edinburgh, but was translated into French and German, and exercised a vast influence on the surgery of the eighteenth century. It was, however, destined to fall, and under the attacks and severe criticisms of John Bell, it ceased to be regarded as an authority. He wrote several other surgical works. In 1778 he published "A Treatise on the Theory and Management of Ulcers." In 1794 appeared "A Treatise on Hydrocele, on Sarcocele, on Cancer, and other diseases of the Testes," and in 1793, "A Treatise on Gonorrhea Virulenta, and Lues Venerea."—E. L.
BELL, Sir Charles, an eminent physiologist and surgeon, born at Edinburgh in 1774, was the youngest son of the Rev. William Bell, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland; his elder brothers having been John Bell, a distinguished surgeon and anatomist of Edinburgh, and George Joseph Bell, an eminent writer on Scottish law, who became professor of the law of Scotland in the university of Edinburgh. Having the misfortune to lose his father whilst he was yet a child, Charles Bell did not receive the same advantages of academical education as his elder brothers; but, as he himself said in after life, "my education was the example set me by my brothers." He very early adopted the medical profession, and, under the guidance of his brother John, so zealously prosecuted his anatomical studies, as very early to render himself competent to afford him important assistance in the completion of his System of Anatomy, and in teaching his classes. In 1799 Charles Bell was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and soon afterwards was appointed one of the surgeons of the Royal Infirmary of that city, where he acquired a high reputation as a skilful operator. In 1806 he removed to London, and established himself as a lecturer on anatomy and surgery, at first independently, but afterwards (1811) in association with others, at the celebrated anatomical school of Great Windmill Street. His work on the "Anatomy of Expression," first published at the time of his settlement in London, contributed to gain him a general reputation. This work not only comprised an examination into the sources of beauty in the antique, and into the various theories of beauty, natural and ideal, in the human form, but also an inquiry into the laws regulating the expression of the passions in the muscular movements of the countenance and of the body generally. It was in the prosecution of this inquiry that Charles Bell was led to his subsequent discoveries in the physiology of the nervous system; and he continued to follow it up even to the end of his life. In 1811 he married Marion, daughter of Charles Shaw, Esq., of Ayr, some other members of whose family subsequently became intimately associated with him, as assistants in his scientific labours, and expositors of his doctrines. In 1812 he was elected surgeon to the Middlesex hospital; and continued to hold this post until he quitted London for Edinburgh in 1836. It was between 1810 and 1812, that he first began to draw the attention of the scientific world to those views of the physiology of the nervous system, which he afterwards more fully elaborated; his "Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain" having been printed and circulated among his friends, although not published, in 1810 or 1811. He continued to prosecute his inquiries without any further announcement of their results (save in his oral instructions) until the year 1821, when he communicated to the Royal Society the first of that series of memoirs on the nervous system, which unquestionably laid the foundation of all our present knowledge of its true structure and functions, and will immortalize his name so long as physiological science exists. Of his labours in this field we shall presently give a more detailed account.
Whilst prosecuting his physiological researches, Charles Bell was still zealously applying himself to the improvement as well as to the practice of the surgical art. He had given much attention to various questions of military surgery, when our soldiers came home wounded from the peninsular war; and immediately after the battle of Waterloo, incited alike by humanity and by zeal for professional improvement, he proceeded to Brussels, where he tendered his assistance in the care of the wounded, and was incessantly engaged for three successive days and nights in the operations and dressings required by upwards of three hundred patients.
In 1824 he accepted the senior professorship of anatomy and surgery in the London College of Surgeons; and his lectures, which excited much attention, formed the basis of a treatise on "Animal Mechanics," which was sometime afterwards published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In 1826 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society. On the formation of the London university (now University college), in 1827, Charles Bell accepted the appointment of professor of anatomy and physiology, with the expectation that he was to be considered as the head of the medical school; finding himself disappointed, however, he soon afterwards resigned the chair. On the accession of William IV. he received the honour of knighthood, in common with several other eminent scientific men. About the same time he was selected by the president of the Royal Society as the writer of one of the Bridgewater Treatises, his subject being "The Mechanism and vital Endowments of the Hand, as evincing Design;" and he also co-operated with Lord Brougham in reproducing the "Natural Theology" of Paley, with ample illustrations. At this time he was practising successfully as a surgeon in London, and frequently delivered clinical lectures on surgery at the Middlesex hospital. In 1836 he accepted the offer of the surgical chair in the university of Edinburgh, to which he was invited by the unsolicited and unanimous vote of its patrons; and his first course of lectures was attended by nearly all the surgical students of that metropolis. It soon appeared, however, that neither as a teacher nor as a practitioner of surgery, was he likely to hold that preeminent rank in his native city to which he felt himself entitled; and the results of his change of position were far from being accordant with his anticipations. Though he had meditated a great work on the nervous system, he did not find means for its production; and after the publication of his "Institutes of Surgery," a text-book for his class, in 1838, he chiefly applied his leisure time to the preparation of a new edition of his "Anatomy of Expression," which he greatly amplified by observations on the works of art with which Italy abounds, made during a tour in one of his college vacations. This edition was not published until after his death, which occurred rather suddenly in the summer of 1842, at Hallow Park, Worcestershire, while he was on his way to London.
The method of exposition adopted by Sir Charles Bell was, unfortunately, not well calculated to place his doctrines clearly before the world; and much controversy has consequently taken place as to the degree of assistance and correction which he received from others. The following will, it is believed, be found to be a correct view of the successive steps of his discoveries:—Although various physiologists, from Galen downwards, had surmised that the nervous fibrils which ministered to sensation and to motion respectively, might be distinct, though bound up in the same trunks; and although the eminent anatomist Willis had pointed out, a century and a half previously, that certain of the nerves of the head are exclusively sensory, and others exclusively motor, yet no one seems to have thought of subjecting this idea to the test of experiment, or to have formed the conception that the anterior and posterior roots of the spinal nerves ministered to different functions, until Charles Bell entered upon the inquiry. To this he was especially led, as we have seen, by his study of the anatomy of expression; the problem which he first set himself to resolve being apparently this:—Why the same organ, e.g. the tongue, should be supplied by three different nerves. At the time when he commenced his labours, it was the received doctrine that the cerebrum was the organ of sensation and of voluntary motion; and the cerebellum, of the vital and involuntary motions; and his original idea of the relative functions of the anterior and posterior roots of the spinal nerves, was that the former were in structural connection with the cerebrum, through the anterior portion of the spinal cord, and ministered to its functions, whilst the latter were in the like anatomical and physiological connection with the cerebellum. The only confirmation which experiment afforded to this idea was that, when the anterior roots of the nerves were irritated, movements were produced in the voluntary muscles; the function which he assigned posterior roots, however, was in harmony with the then prevalent notion, that the ganglionic enlargements which they bear were destined to "cut off sensation," so as to prevent impressions upon the apparatus of organic life from being felt. Although this first idea has since proved to be altogether erroneous, yet the method of investigation by experiments on the roots of the nerves, was in itself a great
