Sir Charles Bell
The disorder affects approximately 2 out of 10,000 people, however, the actual incidence is likely to be much higher (around 1 out of 500 to 1,000). The disorder damages the 7th cranial (facial) nerve, the nerve that controls movement of the muscles of the face
Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) Scottish anatomist and surgeon.
Charles Bell was a brilliant Scottish surgeon-anatomist who was brought up in Edinburgh as the son of an episcopal clergyman. In 1801 he left the city after a heated argument with the Faculty of Medicine because both he and his eldest brother John had been denied surgical positions at the Royal Infirmary Hospital. He worked as an anatomist in 1799 along with his friend surgeon John Cheyne (Cheyne-Stoke breathing), and helped him to publish his first book on paediatric medicine. After the varsity dispute, Bell moved south to London where he stayed there for thirty years. He eventually returned to Scotland, ironically ending his career as professor of surgery at the same University of Edinburgh.
During his sojourn in England, Bell became quite an accomplished artist, and published illustrated drawings and texts that soon became historical classics. The graphics were apparently based on his detailed knowledge of anatomy.
By the year 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte had lost most of his great army after been caught without food or other provisions in the throes of a severe Russia winter. He was captured and sent into exile on the island of Elba, from where he escaped in March 1815 and managed to get back to France and form a new army with which he wanted to reconquer his lost empire. The forces of Prussia and Britain joined together to try in an effort to defeat him. Like his friend Cheyne had done in the earlier century, Charles Bell joined the British army as a surgeon and saw action at the famous Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
His fame today, however, still rests with his medical illustrations and neurology. His Essays on the anatomy of expression in painting (1806) has become a classic of art history. His most notable achievements are his description of the exterior respiratory nerve ("Bell's nerve"), his discovery that lesion of the seventh facial nerve causes facial paralysis ("Bell's palsy"), and his demonstration of the motor function of anterior roots and the sensory function of dorsal roots in spinal nerves (the "Bell-Magendie law"). An Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body is a collection of Bell's observations on the nerves. This edition was published in Philadelphia in 1825, four years after the death of Bonaparte.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
