Taking up the study of medicine under the guidance and tuition of his elder brother John, who was already becoming notable as a lecturer, he very rapidly found his true vocation, and gained such proficiency that before he was twenty-one he was able to take part of his brother’s lectures. In 1799 he published the first part of his “System of Dissections.” Edinburgh, then embittered by the controversy between his brother and Dr. Gregory, and other untoward occurrences, did not give him fair scope for his talents; and it was decided that Charles should adventure himself in London. This was an enterprise of hardihood at that time, for Scotchmen were still looked upon with suspicion; yet he had already become known in London by his association with John Bell in the “Human Anatomy,” by the first two volumes of his “System of Dissections,” and by his engravings of the arteries, brain, and nerves. The impression made upon him by his first experience of London, on a Sunday in November, was thus expressed: “If this be the season that John Bull selects for cutting his throat, Sunday must be the day, for then London is in all its ugliness, all its naked deformity; the houses are like ruins, the streets deserted.” He was soon rather unceremoniously told by a hospital surgeon that they could manufacture their own raw material, and if he had difficulties in Edinburgh, he would have more in London. Some of his early friends in London were cautioned that he was a sharp insinuating young man, who would drive them out of their hospitals. His friend Lynn answered such an innuendo thus: “I liked his brother, and I like himself. He is no humbug. His conversation is open and free.” Lynn indeed discerned that a worthy successor of William Hunter was among them.
Charles Bell gained considerable notice by his criticisms on artistic anatomy, and by the profound knowledge of the human body which he made evident. The manuscript of his “Anatomy of Expression” being in a forward state, it was shown to many persons of influence, including Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society), Benjamin West, Sydney Smith, &c., and the general opinion was that he would make a great name. But Charles did not deceive himself into the idea that his path into situations of importance would be easy. “I can make a few good friends,” he says, “but cannot engage the multitude.”
After many discouragements, having at one time resolved to return to Edinburgh, Mr. Bell took a house, formerly Speaker Onslow’s, in Leicester Street, Leicester Square, and fitted up a lecture-room in it. Here he started as a public lecturer on anatomy and surgery, with an attendance of forty, but only three paying pupils, on January 20, 1806; and the second lecture was delivered to an audience of ten. In February he lectured to a dozen artists, much to their delight. On the 10th February 1806, after nearly fifteen months in London, he received his first fee in consultation.
Many years afterwards, looking back upon this period of severe struggle, he wrote: “When I consider the few introductions I then had—to men who could be of no assistance to me—I look back with a renewal of the despair I then felt.... These days of unhappiness and suffering tended greatly to fortify me, so that nothing afterwards could come amiss, nothing but death could bring me to a condition of suffering such as I then endured.... I could not help regretting the noble fields that were everywhere around me for exertion in my profession, and which I found closed against me.” Meanwhile youthful acquaintances in Edinburgh, Horner and Brougham, were getting places in the ministry.
This year his “Anatomy of Expression” was published, and was at once received with high favour, many painters adopting it as their text-book. Flaxman declared he considered Mr. Bell had done more for the arts than any one of that age. Fuseli called it truly valuable.
Charles Bell had more than an ordinary measure of liveliness, good-humour, and geniality. One day he writes: “A band of Pandæans are playing before my window. They make me frisk it. Last night I had a little supper here, with some good flute-playing. It was intended to make Horner know Wilkie, the Scotch Teniers.” All through life he retained this sensibility to lively music. The sound of a familiar Scotch air would start him whistling, and laying aside work, he would take his wife by the hand, and make her dance with him through room after room.
By the autumn of 1807, his note as a surgeon had grown, and patients became numerous. His lectures on surgery, too, became an unqualified success, though the number of paying pupils was small. In 1808, however, he had thirty-six pupils. His studies for his lectures were most faithfully and zealously prosecuted. His lectures were most original: his discoveries were given step by step to his class-pupils. The first record of his results in regard to the nervous system is in a letter of 26th November 1807, when he writes: “I have done a more interesting nova anatomia cerebri humani than it is possible to conceive.” This developed gradually into an introduction to the Nervous System, which was shown to many in manuscript. Meanwhile the Professorship of Anatomy at the Royal Academy was about to become vacant, and Mr. Bell’s candidature was warmly advocated by many of the most eminent surgeons and artists. Abernethy desisted from the idea of candidature in his favour. Wilson was dissuaded from competing. Sir Astley Cooper wrote a letter stating that he beyond all comparison merited the post, and would be an invaluable acquisition to the Royal Academy. But in the end, Mr., afterward Sir Anthony, Carlisle was elected, and lectured to but four pupils in his first course. It is to be remembered that even at hospitals, lectures were by no means common things at this time. Several of the most eminent hospital surgeons did not lecture at all, or only lectured occasionally. So that Bell’s class of thirty-six was really a first-rate one.
A mark of his original and painstaking mode of making progress was seen in the visit he paid to Haslar Hospital, when the wounded soldiers from Corunna arrived home, in January 1809. The scene was a most striking and impressive one to his feeling nature. “I have stooped,” he says, “over hundreds of wretches in the most striking variety of woe and misery, picking out the wounded. Each day as I awake, still I see the long line of sick and lame slowly moving from the beach: it seems to have no end. There is something in the interrupted and very slow motion of these distant objects singularly affecting.” From the cases he saw he gained much; and laid the foundation of his essay on Gunshot Wounds, appended to the second edition of his “Operative Surgery.”
In 1810 Charles Bell became engaged to his future wife, Marion Shaw, whose sister Barbara had for some years been married to his brother George. Their brothers, John and Alexander, became Charles Bell’s pupils and assistants. In writing to Miss Shaw at one time Mr. Bell revealed to her much of the sadness and melancholy of his first years in London, oppressed by the consciousness of not occupying a position corresponding to his talents, and finding everywhere difficulties. “Many and many a time in the prosecution of my plans of life have I wished that I were with the armies, to rid myself of the load of life without discredit.” He was married on the 3d of June, 1811.
The next year was another important landmark in Charles Bell’s life. He accepted an offer of partnership with Mr. Wilson in the Great Windmill Street School of Medicine. His own preparations and drawings, &c., were added to the museum already there, and his joy at seeing the two united was great and unmixed. His first lecture in the school was to a class of 80 to 100 pupils. He was at the height of his ambition in being connected with the celebrated Windmill Street School. Mr., afterwards Sir Benjamin, Brodie, Dr. Roget, and Dr. Brande were among his associates in lecturing. His new house (34 Soho Square) had as many resident pupils as he could accommodate; and he was not yet forty years old.