Charles Bell

Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist and philosophical theologian, born in 1774 and died in 1842. His best known scientific contribution was showing that the sensory nerves and the motor nerves of the spinal cord are different, and he also described the facial condition that still carries his name as Bell's palsy. He came from a notable Edinburgh family: his three older brothers included Robert Bell, a Writer to the Signet, John Bell, also a noted surgeon and writer, and George Joseph Bell, an advocate who became a professor of law at the University of Edinburgh and a principal clerk at the Court of Session.