Sir Charles Bell KH FRS FRSE FRCSE MWS (12 November 1774 – 28 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian.

[1] In addition to this, his mother also helped Charles's natural artistic ability by paying for his regular drawing and painting lessons from David Allan, a well-known Scottish painter.

His inherent talent as an artist came to the fore when he helped his brother complete a four-volume work called The Anatomy of the Human Body.

Using money from his wife's dowry, Bell purchased a share of the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy which had been founded by the anatomist William Hunter.

In addition to his domestic pursuits, Bell also served as a military surgeon, making elaborate recordings of neurological injuries at the Royal Hospital Haslar and famously documenting his experiences at Waterloo in 1815.

Bell was instrumental in the creation of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and became, in 1824, the first professor of Anatomy and Surgery of the College of Surgeons in London.

For the next seven years, Bell gave clinical lectures at the Middlesex Hospital and in 1835 he accepted the position of the Chair of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh[12] following the premature death of Prof John William Turner.

[16] Bell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 8 June 1807, on the nomination of Robert Jameson, William Wright and Thomas Macknight.

[citation needed] Charles Bell was a prolific author who combined his anatomical knowledge with his artistic eye to produce a number of highly detailed and beautifully illustrated books.

In 1799, Bell published his first work "A System of Dissections, explaining the Anatomy of the Human Body, the manner of displaying Parts and their Varieties in Disease".

These sets of engravings consisted of intricate and detailed anatomical diagrams accompanied with labels and a brief description of their functionality in the human body and were published as an educational tool for aspiring medical students.

[citation needed] Bell published detailed studies of the nervous system in 1811, in his privately circulated book An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain.

[4] Despite this lukewarm response, Charles Bell continued to study the anatomy of the human brain and laid his focus upon the nerves connected to it.

In 1821, Bell published the "On the Nerves: Giving an Account of some Experiments on Their Structure and Functions, Which Lead to a New Arrangement of the System" in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

[21] Due to this publication, Charles Bell is regarded as one of the first physicians to combine the scientific study of neuroanatomy with clinical practice.

Darwin detailed these opinions in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), written with the active collaboration of the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne.

In 1829, Francis Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, died and in his will, he left a large sum of money to the President of the Royal Society of London.

A number of discoveries received his name: Charles Bell House, part of University College London, is used for teaching and research in surgery.