John Bell (12 May 176315 April 1820) was a
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
and
surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...
.
Life
Bell was born in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
,
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
; an elder brother of
Sir Charles Bell. After completing his professional education at Edinburgh, he carried on from 1790 in Surgeons' Square an anatomical lecture-theatre, where, in spite of much opposition, due partly to the unconservative character of his teaching, he attracted large audiences by his lectures, in which he was for a time assisted by his younger brother Charles. From 1793 to 1795, he published ''Discourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds''.
He is considered, along with
Pierre-Joseph Desault and
John Hunter, to be a founder of the modern surgery of the
vascular system
In vertebrates, the circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the body. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, that consists of the heart a ...
.
In 1789 Bell was elected a member of the
Harveian Society of Edinburgh
The Harveian Society of Edinburgh was founded in April 1782 by Andrew Duncan (physician, born 1744), Andrew Duncan. The Society holds an annual Festival in honour of the life and works of William Harvey, the physician who first correctly des ...
and from 1795 to 1814 was one of its secretaries.
A man of compassion, Bell made many enemies because he was outspoken about the unnecessary pain and suffering inflicted by incompetent surgeons practicing in Scotland. In 1800 he became involved in an unfortunate controversy with
James Gregory (1753–1821), the professor of medicine at Edinburgh. Gregory in 1800 attacked the system whereby the fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh acted in rotation as surgeons at the Royal Infirmary, with the result that the younger fellows were excluded. Bell, who was among the number, composed an Answer for the Junior Members (1800), and ten years later published a collection of ''Letters on Professional Character and Manners'', which he had addressed to Gregory. After his exclusion from the infirmary he ceased to lecture and devoted himself to study and practice.
Bell was also a talented artist, and was one of the few medical men to illustrate his own work. In 1816 he was injured by a fall from his horse and in the following year went to
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
for the benefit of his health.
He died at
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
on 15 April 1820 and he is buried in the
Protestant Cemetery, Rome
The Non-Catholic Cemetery (), also referred to as the Protestant Cemetery () or the English Cemetery (), is a private cemetery in the Rioni of Rome, rione of Testaccio in Rome. It is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, ...
, just behind the tomb of poet
John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...
.
His works also included ''Principles of Surgery'' (1801), ''Anatomy of the Human Body'', which went through several editions and was translated into German, and ''Observations on Italy'', published by his widow in 1825.
References
Sources
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Further reading
*
External links
John Bell engravings''Anatomia 1522-1867'' digital collection Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, John
1763 births
1820 deaths
18th-century Scottish medical doctors
19th-century Scottish people
Medical doctors from Edinburgh
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Scottish surgeons
Scottish anatomists
Scottish medical writers
Scottish illustrators
Scottish travel writers
Burials in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome
Expatriates in the Papal States