Sir Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell - A Famous Scottish Anatomist
Sir Charles Bell (1774 - 1842) moved to London in 1804 and became surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital in1812. He was professor of anatomy and surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1824. He returned to Edinburgh in 1836 as professor of surgery at the university. Bell made the first distinction in modern times between the sensory and motor nerves, and discovered that they are connected to different parts of the spinal cord. This discovery he announced in 1811 in his Anatomy of the Brain. He further showed that a nerve-fibre is a one-way conductor, and that if a sensory nerve is cut, stimulation of the end nearest the brain still produces the usual sensation. His work on the Nervous System of the Human Body was published in 1830.
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