July 27, 2025 • 36 mins
Dive into the lives and achievements of doctors who made history in their field. Journey from the inception of the prestigious Edinburgh School of Medicine, through William Harveys revolutionary work on blood circulation, to the advancements in surgery and Edward Jenners pivotal role in creating vaccines. This is Volume 1 of a two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of Eminent Doctors Their Lives and their Work,
Volume one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Matter Brachich. Eminent
Doctors Their Lives and their Work, Volume one by George
(00:22):
Thomas Betney, Sir Charles Bell and the Functions of the
Nervous System. It will have been gathered that scientific medicine
and surgery were as yet scarcely in a condition to begin.
After the discovery of the circulation of the blood, physiological
research seemed to halt waiting on anatomy. It now took
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an immense and decided leap forward. Charles Bell was descended
from a family long settled in Glasgow, but his grandfather,
becoming a minister of the scotch Church, settled in Gladsmere, Haddingtonshire,
and died young. And his father, William Bell born seventeen
oh four, was a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church
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in Edinburgh. Here he suffered from all the persecution inflicted
on Episcopalians in Scotland after the Young Pretender's Rising in
seventeen forty five, episcopal ministers were forbidden to officiate to
more than four besides the family, and later an act
was passed to forbid anyone in Holy Orders to officiate
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in a house of which he was not the master.
William Bell's first wife dying in seventeen fifty, leaving no
surviving children. He married in seventeen fifty seven Margaret Morris,
granddaughter of Bishop White, who became the mother of Robert Bell,
author of the scotch Law Dictionary, John Bell, the celebrated surgeon,
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George Joseph Bell, professor of the Law of Scotland in
the University of Edinburgh and author of the Commentaries on
the Law of Scotland, and Sir Charles Bell, the father
of these four eminent sons, died in seventeen seven, seventy nine,
when Charles was but five years old. The straightened circumstances
in which the family were left at the father's death
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resulted in knitting them closely together in their common struggle.
The affection which existed through life between George Joseph Bell
and Charles four years younger, is one of the most
delightful on record. Much of the brother's education was the
result of their own efforts. George relates that although his
schooling cost but five shillings a quarter, it had to
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be discontinued when he was eleven years old. Missus Bell
aided her children with French and drawing, and had a
considerable share in bringing forth that talent for drawing, which
afterwards was of such advantage both to John and Charles.
Although Charles was at some time at the High School
at Edinburgh, he most emphatically declares that he received no
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education but from his mother and the example set him
by his brothers, all of whom showed a true independence
and self reliance. He says, for twenty years of my life,
I had but one wish to gratify my mother and
to do something to alleviate what I saw her suffer
when she died. The blank and indifference produced in his
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whole nature was so great that all ambition seemed to
die out of him for a long time. His brothers
made a plaything of him in childhood, but yet appeared
confident of his future. They were wont to say, oh,
never mind, Charlie will do very well. No fear for Charlie.
Yet in after life he greatly regretted that his early
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education was limited, and he took very great pains to
improve what was deficient. Even within the last few years
of his life. He engaged French and Italian masters to
read with him, although he could read both languages. Before
he left Edinburgh 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
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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 seventeen ninety nine he published
the first part of his System of Dissections. Edinburgh, then,
embittered by the controversy between his brother and Doctor Gregory
and other untoward occurrences, did not give him fair scope
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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
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his engravings of the arteries, brain and nerves. The impression
made upon him by his first experience in London on
a Sunday in November was thus expressed. If this be
the season, and that John Ball 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
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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.
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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,
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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, Sidney Smith, et cetera, and the
general opinion was that he would make a great name.
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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, mister Bell took a house
formerly Speaker Onslow's in Leicester's Street, Leicester Square, and fitted
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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 the twentieth,
eighteen o six, and the second lecture was delivered to
an audience of In February, he lectured to a dozen artists,
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much to their delight. On the tenth of February eighteen
o six, 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
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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,
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and which I found closed against me. Meanwhile, youthful acquaintances
in Edinburgh, Horner and Browham were getting places in the ministry.
This year his Anatoy of Expression was published, and was
at once received with high favor, many painters adopting it
as their text book. Flaxman declared he considered mister Bell
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had done more for the arts than any one of
that age. Fuselli called it truly valuable. Charles Bell had
more than an ordinary measure of liveliness, good humor, and geniality.
One day he writes, a band of pandans are playing
before my window. They make me frisk it last night
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I had a little supper here with some good flute playing.
It was intended to make Horner no Wilkie the Scotch
ten years. All through life he retained his 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
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him through room after room. By the autumn of eighteen
o seven he is 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 eighteen o eight, however, he had thirty six pupils.
His studies for his lectures were most faithfully and zealously prosecuted.
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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 twenty sixth of November eighteen o seven,
when he writes, I have done a more interesting nova
anatomia cerebris humani than it is possible to conceive. This
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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 mister Bell's candidature was warmly advocated by many of
the most eminent surgeons and artists. ABERNETHI desisted from the
idea of candidature in his favor. Wilson was dissuaded from competing.
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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 mister
Afterward Sir Anthony Carlyle was elected and lectured to but
four pupils in his first course. It is to be
remembered that even hospitals, lectures were by no means common
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things at this time. Several of the most eminent hospital
surgeons did not lecture at all, or only lectured occasionally,
so that Belle'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 hospitals from Karuna
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arrived home in January eighteen o nine. 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
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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.
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In eighteen ten, 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, mister Bell revealed to her much of
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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
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was married on the third of June eighteen eleven. The
next year was another important landmark in Charles Bell's life.
He accepted an offer of partnership with mister Wilson in
the great Windmill Street School of Medicine. His own preparations
and drawings, et cetera, were added to the museum already there,
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and his joy at seeing that, too, united, was great
and unmixed. His first lecture in the school was to
a class of eighty two one hundred pupils. He was
at the height of his ambition being connected with the
celebrated Windmill Street School. Mister after Words, Sir Benjamin Brody,
Doctor Roget and doctor Brand were among his associates in lecturing.
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His new house, thirty four Soho Square, had as many
resident pupils as he could accommodate, and he was not
yet forty years old. In eighteen thirteen he was admitted
into the Royal College of Surgeons, a formal examination being necessary.
He records with amusement that the fasitious dogs asked him
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of what disease he thought Buonaparte would die. In eighteen fourteen,
he was elected by a large majority surgeon to Middlesex
Hospital and immediately began to make use of his new opportunities.
His operations and clinical lectures soon became attended by large
numbers of students and even eminent practitioners. A Russian general,
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Baron Dreason, having a ball in his thigh, was placed
under his care and especially commended to him by the
Czar Alexand a fee of two hundred pounds and two
silver cups were his reward, as well as great personal
regard for both the general and his aid de camp.
When the stirring news of Waterloo arrived in London, the
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same spirit which had animated him after Corona impelled mister
Bell to start off, accompanied by john Shaw, to render
assistance to the wounded. The amount of work was appalling.
Nothing was ready to cope with the mass of misery
suddenly accumulated, mister Bell, finding after an inspection of the situation,
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that he could do most by taking in hand the
needful operations upon the French wounded commenced his operations at
six one morning, and continued incessantly operating till seven in
the evening, and so on for three consecutive days. While
he amputated one man's thigh, there lay at one time
thirteen others waiting or begging to be taken. Now, it
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was a strange thing, he says, to feel my clothes
stiff with blood, and my arms powerless with the exertion
of using the knife. In more extraordinary still, to find
my mind calm amidst such variety of suffering. But to
give one of these objects access to your feelings was
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to allow yourself to be unmanned for the performance of
a duty. It appears strange that a man who, in
eighteen oh seven had commenced what proved to be such
an epoch making series of discoveries in regard to the
nervous system, should have so long allowed them to lack
general publicity. His manuscript was first shown to his brother
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and other friends in eighteen o eight, but it is
to be noted that when in eighteen eleven he privately
circulated a pamphlet under the title of an Idea of
a New anatomy of the brain submitted for the observation
of the author's friends. They received it with but scant appreciation,
and either failed to regard it as remarkably novel or
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considered the views it put forth incredible. At this period,
while the brain was believed to be the organ of thought,
it was also supposed to discharge some nervous fluid through
the spinal cord to the nerves. Little was accurately known
about the functions of the nerves. Even John Bell and
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Astley Cooper had advised the section of the facial nerve
to cure tick, thus paralyzing the muscles of the face
instead of relieving the pain. Microscopy had not yet revealed
the multitudinous fibers of which nerves are composed, and experimental
evidence was confined to comparatively coarse forms. Thus, on cutting
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across the main trunk of a nerve, both sensation and
motion were lost in the parts supplied by the nerve.
Bell first disentangled the functions of sensation motion and found
that they were carried on through distinct nerve fibers. He
noticed the distinct properties of the nerves of the senses,
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for instance, the fact that a prick of the optic
nerve in an operation caused a flash of light to
be perceived, not a sensation of pain. When the pricking
of certain papilli of the tongue gave rise to a
sensation of taste, not of pain, and when a blow
upon the ear occasioned the hearing of noises. Thus he
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acquired the conception that in the brain the powers of
nerves were distinct and peculiar, and due to the portion
of the brain from which they started. Seeing that in
the vast number of the nerves of the body, the
functions of sensation and motion were evidently combined, Bell imagined
that these nerves consisted of different portions tied together, and
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he sought for a method of determining how they were combined.
The separate portions in which the spinal nerves enter the
spinal cord, forming two roots, anterior and posterior, occurred to
him as furnishing a possibility of experimental inquiry. He now
resolved to make crucial experiments on living animals, which should
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settle the question by a well devised plan of procedure.
No man was more averse to giving unnecessary pain than
Charles Bell. No man felt more keenly the sufferings of
his patience. The first brief record of the results is
as follows. Experiment one, I opened the spine and pricked
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and injured the posterior filaments of the nerves. No motion
of the muscles followed. I then touched the anterior division.
Immediately the parts were convulsed. Experiment two. I now destroyed
the posterior part of the spinal marrow by the point
of a needle. No convulsive movement followed. I injured the
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anterior part, and the animal was convulsed. It was at
once inferred that the anterior root of the spinal nerves
was motor in its functions, the posterior root sensory. This
simple fact revolutionized the physiology of the whole subject. We
cannot now realize the novelty which there was in attaining
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this extent of knowledge of the nervous system, or how
valuable this firm basis was in commencing to unravel the
nervous mechanism. We cannot here detail the experiments and trains
of reasoning by which it was shown that the fifth
cranial nerve was similar in its general plan to the
spinal nerves, including distinct sensory and motor portions, and by
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which the knowledge of the cranial nerves generally was widely extended.
We note now that Bell's first paper on the nervous
system was read before the Royal Society on the twenty
first of July eighteen twenty one, and was received with
great approbation. It soon became generally known throughout Great Britain
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and on the continent, being by almost everyone acknowledged as
strikingly original. The dispute which afterwards arose as to his
perfect originality and independence, having been so conclusively settled in
mister Bell's favor by the production of his original pamphlet,
manuscript and letters, no account of the controversy need here
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be given. He himself fully felt the importance of his discoveries.
I have made a greater discovery than ever was made
by any one man. In anatomy, he says, not vaingloriously,
but as a simple perception of the fact. The application
of the new knowledge to the elucidation of many obscure
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diseases where the nervous system was affected engaged Charles Bell's
zealous attention. He speedily classified and arranged cases illustrative of
the action of the motor and sensory nerves, Cases where
the muscles of the face were paralyzed, as well as
various kinds of paralysis throughout the body. Instances of partial
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or local pain were explained in their relation to the
nerves concerned. Disorders of the eye, tongue, muscles of respiration,
et cetera. All receive new illumination from his researches. A
further discovery was that of the muscular sense, by which
we perceive many of the qualities of objects surrounding us,
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and which even enables us to stand upright. The sensation
of the degree of muscular effort put forth in every action,
in every resistance to a large extent, builds up our
judgments about external objects and determines our actions. And the
recognition of the fact that we perceived this by a
sense distinct from touch is due to Bell. The study
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of the eye entered very largely into this question, as
the muscular movements of the eye are of such extreme
import in our perceptions. In eighteen eighteen he wrote, I
think I have made out that squinting depends on the
overaction of one of the oblique muscles, and that it
may be cured by an operation. I am looking out
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for a patient to try this upon, but for want
of a squinting monkey to make the first trial upon.
The thought was not carried to practical results, and it
remained for others to mature the operation for the cure
of squinting. As a specimen of Bell's style and popular writing,
to which he devoted great pains, we quote from his
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Bridgewater Treatise on the Hand, a passage dealing with the
movements of the eye. On coming into a room, we
see the whole side of it at once, the mirror,
the pictures, the corners, the chairs. But we are deceived,
being unconscious of the motions of the eye, and that
each object is ra rapidly but successively presented to it.
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It is easy to show that if the eye were steady,
vision would be quickly lost. That all these objects, which
are distinct and brilliant, are so from the motion of
the eye that they would disappear if it were otherwise.
For example, let us fix the eye on one point,
a thing difficult to do owing to the very disposition
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to motion in the eye. But by repeated attempts we
may at length acquire the power of fixing the eye
to a point. When we have done so, we shall
find that the whole scene becomes more and more obscure,
and finally vanishes. Let us fix the eye on the
corner of the frame of the principal picture in the room.
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At first, everything around it is distinct. In a very
little time, however, the impression becomes weaker, objects appear dim,
and then the eye has an almost controllable desire to wander.
If this be resisted, the impressions of the figures in
the picture first fade. For a time we see the
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gilded frame, but this also becomes dim. When we have
thus far ascertained the fact. If we change the direction
of the eye but ever so little at once, the
whole scene will be again perfect before us. These phenomena
are consequent upon the retina being subject to exhaustion. Considering
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the warmth with which the originality of Charles Bell's views
was contested, it is indeed striking to notice how early
he composed himself to answer only by silence. This must be,
he said, the mode in which my opinions shall come
to be acknowledged without some agitation, controversy. They would never
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be propagated. I am satisfied. I have a secure ground.
In eighteen twenty one, Wilson died and Belle's assumption of
the chief responsibility for the Windmill Street School, with heavy
pecuniary liabilities followed. In eighteen twenty four he was appointed
to the professorship of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal
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College of Surgeons. So he set himself with renewed energy
to make his lectures of the utmost value to practicing surgeons.
His first lecture was given to an audience crowded to suffocation.
The crowding continued at subsequent lectures, many being unable to
get admission. On the nineteenth of July eighteen twenty seven,
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his beloved brother in law and assistant, John Shaw, died.
His suffering from this loss was intense. In his discoveries,
his first great object had always been to convince Johnny.
This faithful brother in law was fortunately replaced by another
Alexander Shaw, afterwards surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, notable in
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after time times as a defender of his fame and
expounder of his doctrines. In the same year was matured
the project long incubating of a new London University now
University College, in which Charles Bell was to be the
head of the medical school. He delivered the inaugural lecture
and for some years took an active part in its organization.
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The arrangements, however, which were made by the governing body,
were in many respects inconsistent with the high ideal of
teaching which Charles Bell had and with the freedom of
procedure to which he had been for so many years
accustomed at the Winbille Street School. Consequently, in eighteen thirty
he finally retired from the new college and felt, in
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some respects stranded. For discovery and teaching were his very life.
Practice was to him an irksome necessity. Thus, a time
of life in which practical success might have made him
wealthy was characterized by depression, sadness, principally relieved by a
very unusual recreation for a hard work London practitioner, namely
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fly fishing. He was first attracted to the sport by
spending a day at Pansheng with his bosom friend John Richardson.
The evident delight of his friend in this occupation, and
the freshness and relaxation which had afforded convinced him that
he had found the thing he wanted to sweep from
his mind, the cobwebs of professional life. Lady Bell says
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he was often on the water side before sunrise, indeed
before he could see his flies, and he did enjoy
these morning hours. I came down with his breakfast, bringing
books and arrangements for passing the whole day, even with
cloaks and umbrellas, for no weather deterred us. He liked
me to see him land his fish, and waved his
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hat for me to come in the intervals of angling.
Many of the best parts of his popular works on
the hand and on animal mechanics, were written in spite
of the feelings of disappointment, which pressed him severely on
some occasions. It must not be imagined that he was
predominantly unhappy. Lord Jeffrey described him as happy. Charlie Bell,
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Lord Cockburn wrote, if I ever knew a generally and
practically happy man, it was Sir Charles Bell. Alexander Shaw
said of him, his mind was a garden of flowers
and a forest of hardy trees. Its exercise in profound
thought gave him high enjoyment. Yet he would often avow
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his pleasure in being still a boy, and he did
love life and nature with the freshness of youth. I
therefore repeat, if ever I knew a happy man, it
was Sir Charles Bell. Yet, seeing that he was convinced
that the place of a professor who fills his place
is the most respectable in life, we may believe that
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a painful sense of ungratified desire was largely present, if
not continually expressed. In eighteen thirty five he writes, my
hands are better for operation than any I have seen
at work, But an operating surgeon's life has no equivalent
reward in this world. I must be the teacher and
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consulting surgeon to be happy. In eighteen thirty one, in
connection with the accession of William the Fourth, the Gelphic
Order of Knighthood was conferred on several distinguished men of science,
among whom Charles Bell was included. His association with Herschel
and Brewster in this honor was gratifying and appropriate. A
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complete school of medicine was now projected in connection with
the Middlesex Hospital in which he was to take a
prominent part. It had not, however, passed through three complete
months of its history, when the Town Council of Edinburgh
elected Sir Charles to the u Chair of Surgery in
the University, and the offer proved attractive enough to induce
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him to leave London. He had always cherished the idea
of a return to Edinburgh at some future time, and
it appeared to him that there was a possibility of
a sphere of more elevated usefulness there than he could
now hope for in London. Moreover, his heart was in Scotland,
in the streets of Edinburgh, in the theater where Monroe
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had lectured to him, in the society of his old
friends Jeffrey Cock, William Clerk, Adam Ferguson, and most of
all his brother George. London is a place to live in,
but not to die in, he said. My comfort has
ever been to labor for some great purpose, and my
great object of study has been attained. There is but
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one place where I can hope to fulfill the object
of my scientific labor, and that is Edinburgh. And that
is an experiment. Successful as his class were in Edinburgh,
and influential as his position speedily became. It must be
acknowledged that the experiment was a failure, for it did
not give him the satisfaction he had hoped. Practiced in
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Edinburgh could not possibly yield what London did, and the
emoluments of the university chair did not counterbalance this. Some
coldness too has shown him on the part of his
fellow professors. It was an old case of Scotch undemonstrativeness.
I have had a German professor to breakfast, he writes,
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who brings me a volume from Paris. They make me
greater than Harvey. I wish to heaven the folks at
home would make something of me. I thought, in addressing
the new made doctors at the conclusion of the session,
that I had done well. But not one word of
approbation from any professor, nor has one of them in
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all this time called me in to consultation, except when
forced by the desire of the patient. His income, never
very considerable in Edinburgh, diminished considerably. I put down my
carriage with as little feeling as I throw off my shoes,
he says. But when in eighteen forty two a government
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proposal appeared likely to end in the extinction of the
privileges of his beloved university, his excitement was unbounded. He
set off for London as soon as he could, but
he was attacked by a spasm of the stomach so
severe as to threaten his life. He hastened on towards London,
but while at Manchester assisting at an operation, he thought
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he should have been obliged to lie and roll on
the carpet or leave the room in the midst of it.
On Wednesday, April twenty seventh, eighteen forty two, Sir Charles
and Lady Bell reached Tallow Park, the seat of Missus Holland,
near Worcester, Looking on the winding Severn and the distant hills.
He said to his wife, this is a novel spot.
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Here I fain would rest till they come to take
me away. Here he sketched an old yew tree, some sheep,
and the river, then two children and a donkey. As
he went back, he looked with his observant eye at
every shrub, commented on the bird's notes, and gathered up
their feathers for his flies. After dinner the same evening,
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he gave graphic sketches of medical celebrities he had known, admired,
and discussed an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci's last supper,
and was altogether so happy in mood that he said
to his wife, did you ever see me happier or
better than I have been all this forenoon? Yet he
had been several times that day in imminent danger of
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death from the dread malady that John Hunter had, and
Gina Petrius we cannot refrain from quoting the account of
his end letters, page four hundred. The evening reading that
night was the twenty third Psalm, the last prayer, that
beautiful one, for that peace which the world cannot give.
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And then he sank into a deep and quiet sleep.
In the morning he awoke with a spasm, which he
said was caused by changing his position. His wife was
rising to drop his laudanum for him, but calling her
to him, he laid his head on her shoulder, and
there rested. No more appropriate tribute has been paid to
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Sir Charles Bell than that In the Edinburgh Review for
April eighteen seventy two, the writer says, on page four
twenty nine, never passed away a gentler, truer or finer spirit.
His genius was great and has left a legacy to
mankind which will keep his name fresh in many generations,
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but the story of his life has a more potent moral.
It is the story of one who kept his affections
young and his love of the pure and the refined unsullied,
while fighting bravely the battle of life, whose heart was
as tender as his intellect was vigorous and original, who,
while he gained the foremost place among his fellows, turned
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with undiminished zester his home and his friends, and found
there the object, the reward, and the solace of his life.
He was buried near the yew tree he had so
lately sketched in Hallok churchyard a plain stone with his name,
dates of birth and death, and the line the pure
in heart shall see God mark the spot. A tablet
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was afterwards placed in the churchyard with an inscription written
by his lifelong friend Francis Lord Geoffrey. Part of it
runs thus sacred to the memory of Sir Charles Bell, who,
after unfolding with unrivaled sagacity, patience, and success, the wonderful
structure of our mortal bodies, esteemed lightly of his great discoveries,
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except only as they tended to impress himself and others
with a deeper sense of the infinite wisdom and ineffable
goodness of the almighty Creator. His letters, edited by his
widow eighteen seventy, are a lasting memorial of his beautiful
and noble nature. End of section eleven.
Section eleven of Eminent Doctors Their Lives and their Work,
Volume one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Matter Brachich. Eminent
Doctors Their Lives and their Work, Volume one by George
(00:22):
Thomas Betney, Sir Charles Bell and the Functions of the
Nervous System. It will have been gathered that scientific medicine
and surgery were as yet scarcely in a condition to begin.
After the discovery of the circulation of the blood, physiological
research seemed to halt waiting on anatomy. It now took
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an immense and decided leap forward. Charles Bell was descended
from a family long settled in Glasgow, but his grandfather,
becoming a minister of the scotch Church, settled in Gladsmere, Haddingtonshire,
and died young. And his father, William Bell born seventeen
oh four, was a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church
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in Edinburgh. Here he suffered from all the persecution inflicted
on Episcopalians in Scotland after the Young Pretender's Rising in
seventeen forty five, episcopal ministers were forbidden to officiate to
more than four besides the family, and later an act
was passed to forbid anyone in Holy Orders to officiate
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in a house of which he was not the master.
William Bell's first wife dying in seventeen fifty, leaving no
surviving children. He married in seventeen fifty seven Margaret Morris,
granddaughter of Bishop White, who became the mother of Robert Bell,
author of the scotch Law Dictionary, John Bell, the celebrated surgeon,
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George Joseph Bell, professor of the Law of Scotland in
the University of Edinburgh and author of the Commentaries on
the Law of Scotland, and Sir Charles Bell, the father
of these four eminent sons, died in seventeen seven, seventy nine,
when Charles was but five years old. The straightened circumstances
in which the family were left at the father's death
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resulted in knitting them closely together in their common struggle.
The affection which existed through life between George Joseph Bell
and Charles four years younger, is one of the most
delightful on record. Much of the brother's education was the
result of their own efforts. George relates that although his
schooling cost but five shillings a quarter, it had to
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be discontinued when he was eleven years old. Missus Bell
aided her children with French and drawing, and had a
considerable share in bringing forth that talent for drawing, which
afterwards was of such advantage both to John and Charles.
Although Charles was at some time at the High School
at Edinburgh, he most emphatically declares that he received no
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education but from his mother and the example set him
by his brothers, all of whom showed a true independence
and self reliance. He says, for twenty years of my life,
I had but one wish to gratify my mother and
to do something to alleviate what I saw her suffer
when she died. The blank and indifference produced in his
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whole nature was so great that all ambition seemed to
die out of him for a long time. His brothers
made a plaything of him in childhood, but yet appeared
confident of his future. They were wont to say, oh,
never mind, Charlie will do very well. No fear for Charlie.
Yet in after life he greatly regretted that his early
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education was limited, and he took very great pains to
improve what was deficient. Even within the last few years
of his life. He engaged French and Italian masters to
read with him, although he could read both languages. Before
he left Edinburgh 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
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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 seventeen ninety nine he published
the first part of his System of Dissections. Edinburgh, then,
embittered by the controversy between his brother and Doctor Gregory
and other untoward occurrences, did not give him fair scope
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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
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his engravings of the arteries, brain and nerves. The impression
made upon him by his first experience in London on
a Sunday in November was thus expressed. If this be
the season, and that John Ball 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
(05:10):
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.
(05:34):
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,
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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, Sidney Smith, et cetera, and the
general opinion was that he would make a great name.
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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, mister Bell took a house
formerly Speaker Onslow's in Leicester's Street, Leicester Square, and fitted
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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 the twentieth,
eighteen o six, and the second lecture was delivered to
an audience of In February, he lectured to a dozen artists,
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much to their delight. On the tenth of February eighteen
o six, 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
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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,
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and which I found closed against me. Meanwhile, youthful acquaintances
in Edinburgh, Horner and Browham were getting places in the ministry.
This year his Anatoy of Expression was published, and was
at once received with high favor, many painters adopting it
as their text book. Flaxman declared he considered mister Bell
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had done more for the arts than any one of
that age. Fuselli called it truly valuable. Charles Bell had
more than an ordinary measure of liveliness, good humor, and geniality.
One day he writes, a band of pandans are playing
before my window. They make me frisk it last night
(08:31):
I had a little supper here with some good flute playing.
It was intended to make Horner no Wilkie the Scotch
ten years. All through life he retained his 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
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him through room after room. By the autumn of eighteen
o seven he is 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 eighteen o eight, however, he had thirty six pupils.
His studies for his lectures were most faithfully and zealously prosecuted.
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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 twenty sixth of November eighteen o seven,
when he writes, I have done a more interesting nova
anatomia cerebris humani than it is possible to conceive. This
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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 mister Bell's candidature was warmly advocated by many of
the most eminent surgeons and artists. ABERNETHI desisted from the
idea of candidature in his favor. Wilson was dissuaded from competing.
(10:04):
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 mister
Afterward Sir Anthony Carlyle was elected and lectured to but
four pupils in his first course. It is to be
remembered that even hospitals, lectures were by no means common
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things at this time. Several of the most eminent hospital
surgeons did not lecture at all, or only lectured occasionally,
so that Belle'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 hospitals from Karuna
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arrived home in January eighteen o nine. 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
(11:15):
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.
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In eighteen ten, 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, mister Bell revealed to her much of
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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
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was married on the third of June eighteen eleven. The
next year was another important landmark in Charles Bell's life.
He accepted an offer of partnership with mister Wilson in
the great Windmill Street School of Medicine. His own preparations
and drawings, et cetera, were added to the museum already there,
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and his joy at seeing that, too, united, was great
and unmixed. His first lecture in the school was to
a class of eighty two one hundred pupils. He was
at the height of his ambition being connected with the
celebrated Windmill Street School. Mister after Words, Sir Benjamin Brody,
Doctor Roget and doctor Brand were among his associates in lecturing.
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His new house, thirty four Soho Square, had as many
resident pupils as he could accommodate, and he was not
yet forty years old. In eighteen thirteen he was admitted
into the Royal College of Surgeons, a formal examination being necessary.
He records with amusement that the fasitious dogs asked him
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of what disease he thought Buonaparte would die. In eighteen fourteen,
he was elected by a large majority surgeon to Middlesex
Hospital and immediately began to make use of his new opportunities.
His operations and clinical lectures soon became attended by large
numbers of students and even eminent practitioners. A Russian general,
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Baron Dreason, having a ball in his thigh, was placed
under his care and especially commended to him by the
Czar Alexand a fee of two hundred pounds and two
silver cups were his reward, as well as great personal
regard for both the general and his aid de camp.
When the stirring news of Waterloo arrived in London, the
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same spirit which had animated him after Corona impelled mister
Bell to start off, accompanied by john Shaw, to render
assistance to the wounded. The amount of work was appalling.
Nothing was ready to cope with the mass of misery
suddenly accumulated, mister Bell, finding after an inspection of the situation,
(14:36):
that he could do most by taking in hand the
needful operations upon the French wounded commenced his operations at
six one morning, and continued incessantly operating till seven in
the evening, and so on for three consecutive days. While
he amputated one man's thigh, there lay at one time
thirteen others waiting or begging to be taken. Now, it
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was a strange thing, he says, to feel my clothes
stiff with blood, and my arms powerless with the exertion
of using the knife. In more extraordinary still, to find
my mind calm amidst such variety of suffering. But to
give one of these objects access to your feelings was
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to allow yourself to be unmanned for the performance of
a duty. It appears strange that a man who, in
eighteen oh seven had commenced what proved to be such
an epoch making series of discoveries in regard to the
nervous system, should have so long allowed them to lack
general publicity. His manuscript was first shown to his brother
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and other friends in eighteen o eight, but it is
to be noted that when in eighteen eleven he privately
circulated a pamphlet under the title of an Idea of
a New anatomy of the brain submitted for the observation
of the author's friends. They received it with but scant appreciation,
and either failed to regard it as remarkably novel or
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considered the views it put forth incredible. At this period,
while the brain was believed to be the organ of thought,
it was also supposed to discharge some nervous fluid through
the spinal cord to the nerves. Little was accurately known
about the functions of the nerves. Even John Bell and
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Astley Cooper had advised the section of the facial nerve
to cure tick, thus paralyzing the muscles of the face
instead of relieving the pain. Microscopy had not yet revealed
the multitudinous fibers of which nerves are composed, and experimental
evidence was confined to comparatively coarse forms. Thus, on cutting
(16:48):
across the main trunk of a nerve, both sensation and
motion were lost in the parts supplied by the nerve.
Bell first disentangled the functions of sensation motion and found
that they were carried on through distinct nerve fibers. He
noticed the distinct properties of the nerves of the senses,
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for instance, the fact that a prick of the optic
nerve in an operation caused a flash of light to
be perceived, not a sensation of pain. When the pricking
of certain papilli of the tongue gave rise to a
sensation of taste, not of pain, and when a blow
upon the ear occasioned the hearing of noises. Thus he
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acquired the conception that in the brain the powers of
nerves were distinct and peculiar, and due to the portion
of the brain from which they started. Seeing that in
the vast number of the nerves of the body, the
functions of sensation and motion were evidently combined, Bell imagined
that these nerves consisted of different portions tied together, and
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he sought for a method of determining how they were combined.
The separate portions in which the spinal nerves enter the
spinal cord, forming two roots, anterior and posterior, occurred to
him as furnishing a possibility of experimental inquiry. He now
resolved to make crucial experiments on living animals, which should
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settle the question by a well devised plan of procedure.
No man was more averse to giving unnecessary pain than
Charles Bell. No man felt more keenly the sufferings of
his patience. The first brief record of the results is
as follows. Experiment one, I opened the spine and pricked
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and injured the posterior filaments of the nerves. No motion
of the muscles followed. I then touched the anterior division.
Immediately the parts were convulsed. Experiment two. I now destroyed
the posterior part of the spinal marrow by the point
of a needle. No convulsive movement followed. I injured the
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anterior part, and the animal was convulsed. It was at
once inferred that the anterior root of the spinal nerves
was motor in its functions, the posterior root sensory. This
simple fact revolutionized the physiology of the whole subject. We
cannot now realize the novelty which there was in attaining
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this extent of knowledge of the nervous system, or how
valuable this firm basis was in commencing to unravel the
nervous mechanism. We cannot here detail the experiments and trains
of reasoning by which it was shown that the fifth
cranial nerve was similar in its general plan to the
spinal nerves, including distinct sensory and motor portions, and by
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which the knowledge of the cranial nerves generally was widely extended.
We note now that Bell's first paper on the nervous
system was read before the Royal Society on the twenty
first of July eighteen twenty one, and was received with
great approbation. It soon became generally known throughout Great Britain
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and on the continent, being by almost everyone acknowledged as
strikingly original. The dispute which afterwards arose as to his
perfect originality and independence, having been so conclusively settled in
mister Bell's favor by the production of his original pamphlet,
manuscript and letters, no account of the controversy need here
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be given. He himself fully felt the importance of his discoveries.
I have made a greater discovery than ever was made
by any one man. In anatomy, he says, not vaingloriously,
but as a simple perception of the fact. The application
of the new knowledge to the elucidation of many obscure
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diseases where the nervous system was affected engaged Charles Bell's
zealous attention. He speedily classified and arranged cases illustrative of
the action of the motor and sensory nerves, Cases where
the muscles of the face were paralyzed, as well as
various kinds of paralysis throughout the body. Instances of partial
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or local pain were explained in their relation to the
nerves concerned. Disorders of the eye, tongue, muscles of respiration,
et cetera. All receive new illumination from his researches. A
further discovery was that of the muscular sense, by which
we perceive many of the qualities of objects surrounding us,
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and which even enables us to stand upright. The sensation
of the degree of muscular effort put forth in every action,
in every resistance to a large extent, builds up our
judgments about external objects and determines our actions. And the
recognition of the fact that we perceived this by a
sense distinct from touch is due to Bell. The study
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of the eye entered very largely into this question, as
the muscular movements of the eye are of such extreme
import in our perceptions. In eighteen eighteen he wrote, I
think I have made out that squinting depends on the
overaction of one of the oblique muscles, and that it
may be cured by an operation. I am looking out
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for a patient to try this upon, but for want
of a squinting monkey to make the first trial upon.
The thought was not carried to practical results, and it
remained for others to mature the operation for the cure
of squinting. As a specimen of Bell's style and popular writing,
to which he devoted great pains, we quote from his
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Bridgewater Treatise on the Hand, a passage dealing with the
movements of the eye. On coming into a room, we
see the whole side of it at once, the mirror,
the pictures, the corners, the chairs. But we are deceived,
being unconscious of the motions of the eye, and that
each object is ra rapidly but successively presented to it.
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It is easy to show that if the eye were steady,
vision would be quickly lost. That all these objects, which
are distinct and brilliant, are so from the motion of
the eye that they would disappear if it were otherwise.
For example, let us fix the eye on one point,
a thing difficult to do owing to the very disposition
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to motion in the eye. But by repeated attempts we
may at length acquire the power of fixing the eye
to a point. When we have done so, we shall
find that the whole scene becomes more and more obscure,
and finally vanishes. Let us fix the eye on the
corner of the frame of the principal picture in the room.
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At first, everything around it is distinct. In a very
little time, however, the impression becomes weaker, objects appear dim,
and then the eye has an almost controllable desire to wander.
If this be resisted, the impressions of the figures in
the picture first fade. For a time we see the
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gilded frame, but this also becomes dim. When we have
thus far ascertained the fact. If we change the direction
of the eye but ever so little at once, the
whole scene will be again perfect before us. These phenomena
are consequent upon the retina being subject to exhaustion. Considering
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the warmth with which the originality of Charles Bell's views
was contested, it is indeed striking to notice how early
he composed himself to answer only by silence. This must be,
he said, the mode in which my opinions shall come
to be acknowledged without some agitation, controversy. They would never
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be propagated. I am satisfied. I have a secure ground.
In eighteen twenty one, Wilson died and Belle's assumption of
the chief responsibility for the Windmill Street School, with heavy
pecuniary liabilities followed. In eighteen twenty four he was appointed
to the professorship of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal
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College of Surgeons. So he set himself with renewed energy
to make his lectures of the utmost value to practicing surgeons.
His first lecture was given to an audience crowded to suffocation.
The crowding continued at subsequent lectures, many being unable to
get admission. On the nineteenth of July eighteen twenty seven,
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his beloved brother in law and assistant, John Shaw, died.
His suffering from this loss was intense. In his discoveries,
his first great object had always been to convince Johnny.
This faithful brother in law was fortunately replaced by another
Alexander Shaw, afterwards surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, notable in
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after time times as a defender of his fame and
expounder of his doctrines. In the same year was matured
the project long incubating of a new London University now
University College, in which Charles Bell was to be the
head of the medical school. He delivered the inaugural lecture
and for some years took an active part in its organization.
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The arrangements, however, which were made by the governing body,
were in many respects inconsistent with the high ideal of
teaching which Charles Bell had and with the freedom of
procedure to which he had been for so many years
accustomed at the Winbille Street School. Consequently, in eighteen thirty
he finally retired from the new college and felt, in
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some respects stranded. For discovery and teaching were his very life.
Practice was to him an irksome necessity. Thus, a time
of life in which practical success might have made him
wealthy was characterized by depression, sadness, principally relieved by a
very unusual recreation for a hard work London practitioner, namely
(27:09):
fly fishing. He was first attracted to the sport by
spending a day at Pansheng with his bosom friend John Richardson.
The evident delight of his friend in this occupation, and
the freshness and relaxation which had afforded convinced him that
he had found the thing he wanted to sweep from
his mind, the cobwebs of professional life. Lady Bell says
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he was often on the water side before sunrise, indeed
before he could see his flies, and he did enjoy
these morning hours. I came down with his breakfast, bringing
books and arrangements for passing the whole day, even with
cloaks and umbrellas, for no weather deterred us. He liked
me to see him land his fish, and waved his
(27:56):
hat for me to come in the intervals of angling.
Many of the best parts of his popular works on
the hand and on animal mechanics, were written in spite
of the feelings of disappointment, which pressed him severely on
some occasions. It must not be imagined that he was
predominantly unhappy. Lord Jeffrey described him as happy. Charlie Bell,
(28:20):
Lord Cockburn wrote, if I ever knew a generally and
practically happy man, it was Sir Charles Bell. Alexander Shaw
said of him, his mind was a garden of flowers
and a forest of hardy trees. Its exercise in profound
thought gave him high enjoyment. Yet he would often avow
(28:40):
his pleasure in being still a boy, and he did
love life and nature with the freshness of youth. I
therefore repeat, if ever I knew a happy man, it
was Sir Charles Bell. Yet, seeing that he was convinced
that the place of a professor who fills his place
is the most respectable in life, we may believe that
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a painful sense of ungratified desire was largely present, if
not continually expressed. In eighteen thirty five he writes, my
hands are better for operation than any I have seen
at work, But an operating surgeon's life has no equivalent
reward in this world. I must be the teacher and
(29:23):
consulting surgeon to be happy. In eighteen thirty one, in
connection with the accession of William the Fourth, the Gelphic
Order of Knighthood was conferred on several distinguished men of science,
among whom Charles Bell was included. His association with Herschel
and Brewster in this honor was gratifying and appropriate. A
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complete school of medicine was now projected in connection with
the Middlesex Hospital in which he was to take a
prominent part. It had not, however, passed through three complete
months of its history, when the Town Council of Edinburgh
elected Sir Charles to the u Chair of Surgery in
the University, and the offer proved attractive enough to induce
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him to leave London. He had always cherished the idea
of a return to Edinburgh at some future time, and
it appeared to him that there was a possibility of
a sphere of more elevated usefulness there than he could
now hope for in London. Moreover, his heart was in Scotland,
in the streets of Edinburgh, in the theater where Monroe
(30:26):
had lectured to him, in the society of his old
friends Jeffrey Cock, William Clerk, Adam Ferguson, and most of
all his brother George. London is a place to live in,
but not to die in, he said. My comfort has
ever been to labor for some great purpose, and my
great object of study has been attained. There is but
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one place where I can hope to fulfill the object
of my scientific labor, and that is Edinburgh. And that
is an experiment. Successful as his class were in Edinburgh,
and influential as his position speedily became. It must be
acknowledged that the experiment was a failure, for it did
not give him the satisfaction he had hoped. Practiced in
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Edinburgh could not possibly yield what London did, and the
emoluments of the university chair did not counterbalance this. Some
coldness too has shown him on the part of his
fellow professors. It was an old case of Scotch undemonstrativeness.
I have had a German professor to breakfast, he writes,
(31:34):
who brings me a volume from Paris. They make me
greater than Harvey. I wish to heaven the folks at
home would make something of me. I thought, in addressing
the new made doctors at the conclusion of the session,
that I had done well. But not one word of
approbation from any professor, nor has one of them in
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all this time called me in to consultation, except when
forced by the desire of the patient. His income, never
very considerable in Edinburgh, diminished considerably. I put down my
carriage with as little feeling as I throw off my shoes,
he says. But when in eighteen forty two a government
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proposal appeared likely to end in the extinction of the
privileges of his beloved university, his excitement was unbounded. He
set off for London as soon as he could, but
he was attacked by a spasm of the stomach so
severe as to threaten his life. He hastened on towards London,
but while at Manchester assisting at an operation, he thought
(32:39):
he should have been obliged to lie and roll on
the carpet or leave the room in the midst of it.
On Wednesday, April twenty seventh, eighteen forty two, Sir Charles
and Lady Bell reached Tallow Park, the seat of Missus Holland,
near Worcester, Looking on the winding Severn and the distant hills.
He said to his wife, this is a novel spot.
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Here I fain would rest till they come to take
me away. Here he sketched an old yew tree, some sheep,
and the river, then two children and a donkey. As
he went back, he looked with his observant eye at
every shrub, commented on the bird's notes, and gathered up
their feathers for his flies. After dinner the same evening,
(33:24):
he gave graphic sketches of medical celebrities he had known, admired,
and discussed an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci's last supper,
and was altogether so happy in mood that he said
to his wife, did you ever see me happier or
better than I have been all this forenoon? Yet he
had been several times that day in imminent danger of
(33:47):
death from the dread malady that John Hunter had, and
Gina Petrius we cannot refrain from quoting the account of
his end letters, page four hundred. The evening reading that
night was the twenty third Psalm, the last prayer, that
beautiful one, for that peace which the world cannot give.
(34:08):
And then he sank into a deep and quiet sleep.
In the morning he awoke with a spasm, which he
said was caused by changing his position. His wife was
rising to drop his laudanum for him, but calling her
to him, he laid his head on her shoulder, and
there rested. No more appropriate tribute has been paid to
(34:31):
Sir Charles Bell than that In the Edinburgh Review for
April eighteen seventy two, the writer says, on page four
twenty nine, never passed away a gentler, truer or finer spirit.
His genius was great and has left a legacy to
mankind which will keep his name fresh in many generations,
(34:52):
but the story of his life has a more potent moral.
It is the story of one who kept his affections
young and his love of the pure and the refined unsullied,
while fighting bravely the battle of life, whose heart was
as tender as his intellect was vigorous and original, who,
while he gained the foremost place among his fellows, turned
(35:16):
with undiminished zester his home and his friends, and found
there the object, the reward, and the solace of his life.
He was buried near the yew tree he had so
lately sketched in Hallok churchyard a plain stone with his name,
dates of birth and death, and the line the pure
in heart shall see God mark the spot. A tablet
(35:40):
was afterwards placed in the churchyard with an inscription written
by his lifelong friend Francis Lord Geoffrey. Part of it
runs thus sacred to the memory of Sir Charles Bell, who,
after unfolding with unrivaled sagacity, patience, and success, the wonderful
structure of our mortal bodies, esteemed lightly of his great discoveries,
(36:04):
except only as they tended to impress himself and others
with a deeper sense of the infinite wisdom and ineffable
goodness of the almighty Creator. His letters, edited by his
widow eighteen seventy, are a lasting memorial of his beautiful
and noble nature. End of section eleven.
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