Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., C.B

Sir Charles Bell: The artist who went to the roots!

Sir Charles Bell and the anatomy of expression.

The Reverend William Bell of Edinburgh (died 1779) had four distinguished sons. Two (George and Robert) became professors of law. John (1763-1820), who was Edinburgh's most distinguished surgeon at the turn of the eighteenth century, was a brilliant teacher and writer and an excellent draughtsman. But the youngest, Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842), was the most famous, remembered today for his cont...

Sir Charles Bell and the Mysteries of the Brain

The heart and the brain had for thousands of years been considered the "noble" organs, organs shrouded in the deepest of mysteries, highly organized masses of tissues properly hidden from man's prying eyes and curious fingers. They were not to be touched under any circumstances ; they held the secrets of life and death and for that reason were sacred in the sight of God. So it was that for two ...

Sir Charles Bell was not affected by facial paralysis himself!

Despite our recent commentary on the article by Resende and Weber, the authors still seem to believe that Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) himself was affected by facial paralysis. They came to this erroneous conclusion from a paper by Jongkees and by “neurological examination of the photograph of Sir Charles Bell” (Fig 1). However, had they taken the effort to check Jongkees’ German translation wi...

Lawrence of Arabia, Sir Hugh Cairns, and the origin of motorcycle helmets.

When Colonel T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in May 1935, one of the several doctors attending him was a young neurosurgeon, Hugh Cairns. He was moved by the tragedy in a way that was to have far-reaching consequences. At the beginning of the Second World War, he highlighted the unnecessary loss of life among army motorcycle dispatch riders as a...