John Bell (surgeon)

John Bell (1763 to 1820) was a Scottish anatomist and surgeon, born in Edinburgh and the elder brother of Sir Charles Bell. From 1790 he ran an anatomical lecture theatre in Surgeons' Square, where his teaching drew large audiences despite opposition, and between 1793 and 1795 he published Discourses on the Nature and Cure of Wounds. He is regarded, together with Pierre-Joseph Desault and John Hunter, as a founder of the modern surgery of the vascular system. Bell was outspoken about the needless suffering caused by incompetent surgeons, which made him enemies, and a dispute with the professor James Gregory over how surgeons were rotated at the Royal Infirmary ended his lecturing. He was also a gifted artist who illustrated his own works, including Principles of Surgery (1801) and an Anatomy of the Human Body that went through several editions. He died in Rome in 1820 and lies in the Protestant Cemetery there.