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President of the Royal Society of London, for the purpose of rewarding the author of a dissertation on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the works of his creation. But Mr. Davies Gilbert, the then President, shrunk from the responsibility of selecting the person best suited to carry the object of this will into effect; and having associated with himself, in the discharge of this duty, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, they determined to subdivide the sum left to their disposal amongst the writers of eight several essays, illustrative of the subject proposed. In his will, Lord Bridgewater had expressed a desire that the power and construction of the human hand should be embraced in the dissertation; and when Sir Charles Bell was made aware that he had been selected as one of the essayists, he at once, and somewhat to the surprise, it is believed, of his Colleagues in the enterprise, chose that as the subject of his essay.

This work brings into view, a multitude of interesting and curious facts, presented in aspects equally striking and unexpected; while the whole volume is pervaded by a strain of reasoning, not only pre-eminently original, but which, perhaps, bears more directly on the great purpose of the noble testator, than any of the other powerful and effective treatises which have appeared under the same auspices. It has already gone through four editions.

On the accession of William IV. it was proposed by government, with the cordial sanction of the sovereign, to confer the distinction of knighthood, on a limited number of the most eminent men in science; and the individuals selected on that occasion to receive the Guelphic order, were, Sir C. Bell, Sir John Herschel, Sir David Brewster, Sir John Leslie, Sir James Ivory, and Mr. Babbage, the latter of whom assigned reasons for declining the honour. Previous to this, the order had been most deservedly bestowed upon Mr. König, the keeper of natural history in the British Museum, and subsequently upon Sir Henry Ellis, Sir Francis Palgrave, Sir Frederic Madden, Mr. N. Carlisle, and others.

I have already said that Sir C. Bell had succeeded to the school of Great Windmill-street. He had paid to Mr. Wilson a large sum of money on this account, and had engaged to pay him, prospectively, a share of the annual emoluments; and by his own indefatigable exertions, with the invaluable assistance of his brother-in-law, Mr. John Shaw, the school had resumed its former repute. To that school, as preceding memoirs have shown, we owe some of the most distinguished men in the medical profession : it is enough to name William and John Hunter, Baillie, Cruikshank, Thomas, Wilson, and Brodie. In truth, it had become, as it were, the

portal through which professional merit passed into distinction, in the West End of London; and after the destruction of that school, in the manner to be immediately explained, Sir C. Bell has been repeatedly heard to regret, not the pecuniary loss to himself, which was his individual misfortune, but the extinction of the means which he had thus possessed of introducing deserving men to the favourable notice of the profession. This arose from the establishment of the London University, now University College, within ten minutes walk of Windmill Street, and also in the neighbourhood of the Middlesex Hospital, to which Sir C. Bell was professionally attached. He saw at once, that an institution, in some respects similar to his own, supported by men of great opulence and influence, with a fund of £150,000 at their disposal, was a rival, against which it would have been desperate for any private individual, dependent solely on his own resources to have contended. The governors of the University were likewise sensible that such would be the inevitable effect of their institution. They foresaw that the success of the University school would prove fatal to that of Windmill Street, and seriously detrimental to the private interests of the individual then at the head of that establishment. By way of atonement, therefore, to Sir Charles Bell, for this injury, and fully, alive at the same time, to the advantage to themselves to be derived from the attraction of his name, they spontaneously proposed to place him at the head of their new medical school; and he delivered the general opening lecture in this section of the institution, which was followed by a course of characteristic lectures on Physiology.

In the year 1836, at which period Sir C. Bell's reputation, chiefly in consequence of his discoveries connected with the Nervous System, had become European, he was invited, by the unanimous and unsolicited vote of the patrons, to accept the chair of surgery in the University of Edinburgh. Nothing could have been more flattering to him, or more decidedly indicative of the high station in his profession which he attained, than the circumstances attending this invitation. Yet, it was not without surprise that his friends in London learnt that he had made up his mind to leave them, and to take his place, as a professor, in that celebrated Northern University. But we are not without examples in the medical profession, of eminent men being induced, like Haller,* in the full maturity of their fame, to return, as it were in triumph, to the place of their nativity; and nothing certainly can be more striking than the contrast between the circumstances of professional dissension and discord under which, in early

See Memoir of Albert de Haller, M.D.

life, the subject of this memoir left his native city, and the kindly and gratifying auspices under which he returned to it.

In London, after Sir C. Bell had ceased to be a lecturer, his practice, though extensive, was chiefly in nervous affections, to which his high reputation entitled him to the first place. But while it could not fail to be agreeable to him to find that his discoveries were the source of the esteem in which he was held in consultation, still he felt that, in this department of practice, he was called upon to act rather as a physician than as a surgeon ; and that his practice as the surgeon of a large hospital, in which he had been the principal operator for twenty years, and his knowledge and experience as a teacher, acquired at the expense of a life of labour, were comparatively unavailing to the junior members of his profession, to whom, throughout his life, it had been his greatest pleasure to communicate information. To say nothing, therefore, of the social and family ties by which Edinburgh was endeared to him, and notwithstanding the high position he occupied in London, I am less surprised than some of my contemporaries have been, that Sir Charles should have accepted a situation in Edinburgh, which placed him at once at the head of his profession in that city, and at the same time enabled him to render useful, to those on the threshold of the profession, all that he had himself done for surgery, and all that he had learnt from his intimate personal communication with the most distinguished professional men of his time.

That Sir Charles Bell left London with the esteem and regard of the profession was proved to him in the most gratifying manner, by the splendid testimonial which he received from it on his departure; and his reception in Edinburgh, not only by his professional brethren but by all classes, combined with the respect and attachment of his students, show that his friends were not mistaken in their anticipations. In that city, he continues to pursue, with undiminished zeal, the cultivation of physiology and surgery. As a teacher, no one ever had a higher reputation. As a consulting surgeon, it is needless to say that he holds the first place; while his occasional papers, read in the Royal Society, prove that as he advances in life he has lost nothing of that untiring energy, in the pursuit and diffusion of knowledge, which has uniformly marked his career. Nor is it the least agreeable part of my task to add, that years have passed without impairing his robust and vigorous constitution, which gives happy promise of a long continuance of his eminently useful and valuable life.

The best eulogy of Sir Charles Bell is to be found in the catalogue of his writings; they evince his great zeal in the prosecution and advancement of his profession. I have been unwilling in the preceding pages to interrupt,

farther than I could avoid, the brief narrative of his life by any particular description of his works; I must now, however, direct the reader's attention to the numerous and important publications that have issued from his pen. His first publication was, A System of Dissections, explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body, the manner of displaying the Parts and their Varieties in Disease. This was in folio, the first volume appeared in 1799, and the second in 1801. This was a mode of teaching not then practised; although the example which he set has been since followed in an innumerable variety of forms. The plates are all from drawings made by the author, and give most faithful representations of the different parts of the human body as they appear on dissection. The folio size was found to be inconvenient to students, and the letter-press, subjected to some alterations, and with many additions, was arranged in 2 vols. 12mo., the third edition appearing in 1809.

The next work in which he took a part, was, A System of Anatomy, by John and Charles Bell. This system of anatomy stands unrivalled. For facility of expression, elegance of style, knowledge of the views of former anatomists and physiologists, and accuracy of description, I know of no work with which it can be compared. I eagerly embrace this opportunity to express the obligations I lie under to the authors, for it was my chief guide in the acquisition of anatomical knowledge; and this it imparts free of dry technology and insipid detail. The doctrines of the ancients are in all cases fairly stated, and in many most happily ridiculed. To the student who has attained the rudiments of anatomy by dissection and the aid of the ordinary manuals, this work may be recommended as the most useful and the most interesting on the branches of study upon which it professes to treat. The first volume, containing the anatomy of the bones, muscles, and joints, is by John Bell; the second is by the same, on the anatomy of the heart and arteries; the third is on the nervous system, including the organs of sense, by Charles Bell; and the fourth, also by Charles Bell, is on the viscera of the abdomen, the parts in the male and female pelvis, and the lymphatic system. To this volume there is an appendix containing a description of the venous system, and the anatomy of the teeth, in order to complete the anatomy of the human frame.

The preceding work was afterwards illustrated by Sir Charles Bell, with Engravings of the Arteries, 8vo. published in 1801, in 1806, and again in 1811. This was followed by Engravings of the Brain, in 1802, in which is to be found some Observations on the Communication of the Ventricles of the Brain; and, by Engravings of the Nerves, in 1803; the latter two in quarto.

In 1806, he published Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting, in 4to., in which he points out the importance of a knowledge of anatomy to the artist. He displays the errors into which artists may be betrayed by an exclusive attention to the antique; and he most happily shows how an ambitious display of anatomical knowledge necessarily leads to inaccuracy and caricature. He treats of the skull and form of the head, of the muscles of the face in man and in animals, depicts the several passions by a comparison of these, marks what are peculiar to man, embodies the idea of a living principle in the expression of emotion, and finally treats of the economy of the living body as it relates to expression and character in painting. The work is both elegant and useful, and no painter should be ignorant of its contents. A second edition, with many additions, was put forth in 1824. It is illustrated by his pencil, in such a manner as to demonstrate that had he not chosen another path to eminence, a distinguished place in this captivating art must have been conceded to him. I have reason to know, indeed, that amidst his severer and more arduous duties, his pencil has proved a source of refined and elegant relaxation to himself, and of delight to his friends and domestic circle.

His next work was, A System of Operative Surgery, founded on the basis of Anatomy, in 2 vols. 8vo., of which the first edition was published in the year 1807, and to a future edition of which he added the Appendix on Gun-shot Wounds, before adverted to. This work is, indeed, what it professes to be, "a calm and disinterested view of the surgery of the present day, clearly set forth and deduced from actual observation, and grounded on correct knowledge of anatomy." It is a concise system of practical surgery. The author professes it to be original, not collected from his library, or by reference to books, but the result of actual observation. He estimates fairly the great benefits he had enjoyed to enable him to perform such a task; and he most delightfully acknowledges the strictness and severity with which his anatomical education had been conducted by his eminent brother. He describes no operation in these volumes that he had not performed— "from bleeding in the arm, to lithotomy with the knife alone; from tying the umbilical chord, to the operation of the Cæsarean section."

In 1810, he published Letters concerning the Diseases of the Urethra. These relate entirely to stricture, of which he points out the varieties, and the practical conclusions to be drawn from such distinctions. In this work, Sir Charles questions the soundness of the theories of Sir Everard Home as to the cause of stricture in connection with a muscular structure of the urethra, and exposes the abuse of caustic in the treatment of the disease.

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