Charles Bell

Sir Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell
Born	12 November 1774 Edinburgh
Died	28 April 1842(1842-04-28) (aged 67) Hallow Park, Worcestershire
Nationality	British
Fields	Anatomy
Institutions	Surgeon, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (1799-) Practising surgeon, London (1804-) Principal Lecturer, Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy (1812-25) Lectured at Middlesex Hospital etc (1812-36) Professor of Surgery, Edinburgh University (1836-42)
Alma mater	Edinburgh University
Known for	Authority on the human nervous system
Notable awards	Royal Medal (1829)
Notes
Author of "Treatise on Animal Mechanics", "An Essay on the Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design"

Sir Charles Bell KH FRS FRSE FRCSE MWS (12 November 1774 – 28 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord. He is also noted for describing Bell's palsy.

His three older brothers included John Bell (1763–1820), also a noted surgeon and writer; and the advocate George Joseph Bell (1770–1843).

Charles Bell was born in Edinburgh on 12 November 1774, a son of the Rev William Bell, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who died in 1779 when Bell was a small child. Bell grew up in Edinburgh, attending the High School (1784-8) and Edinburgh University, where he took his medical degree in 1798. He conducted his surgical training as assistant to his elder brother John Bell.

He and his brother were artistically gifted, and together they taught anatomy and illustrated and published two volumes of A System of Dissection Explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body. Bell's career was characterized by the accumulation of quite extraordinary honours and achievements - and by acrimonious disputes unusual even by the standards of medicine during the Regency.