As an author he should be credited with the following treatises:—“Anatomy of Expression” (1806); “System of Operative Surgery”; “Animal Mechanics” (1828); “Nervous System” (1830).
SIR CHARLES BELL
(Copied from a print in the possession of the New York Academy of Medicine.)
Sir Charles Bell’s death occurred in 1842.
Sir Charles Bell’s older brother, John Bell, born at Edinburgh in 1763, was also a distinguished anatomist and surgeon. After traveling for a short time in Russia and the north of Europe he returned to Edinburgh in 1786 and began to deliver lectures on surgery and midwifery. From this time forward his private practice as a consulting and operating surgeon steadily increased, until finally, in 1796, he was obliged to discontinue his lectures and devote his entire time to his patients and to the preparation of the several publications of which he was the author. Early in 1816 he was thrown by a spirited horse, and was so seriously injured that he never entirely recovered from the effects of the accident. His death occurred in 1820.
Among the works which he published the following deserve to receive special mention: “The Anatomy of the Human Body” (1793–1802), in the third edition of which work (1811) are to be found a number of plates that were drawn by his brother, Charles Bell; “Engravings of the Bones, Muscles and Joints,” drawn and engraved by himself (1794); “The Principles of Surgery” (1801–1808); and “Letters on Professional Character.”
Speaking of the second volume of the first-mentioned work (“The Anatomy,” etc.) Sprengel, the author of an important German history of medicine, says: “It is remarkable in two respects, viz., for the unusual number of interesting facts which it contains and also for the marked excellence of the plates that accompany the text.”
BOOK VIII
MEDICINE IN FRANCE