Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/235

 Bell, a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church, established at Edinburgh. His mother was the daughter of Mr Morrice, also a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Mr John Bell, after receiving a liberal education, became the pupil of Mr Alexander Wood, surgeon, who was long celebrated in Edinburgh as a medical practitioner. From the first, Mr Bell devoted himself to his professional studies with that enthusiastic ardour so characteristic of genius, and almost always the precursor of distinction. After completing his professional education he travelled for a short time in Russia, and the north of Europe; and on his return commenced his professional duties by delivering lectures on Surgery and Midwifery. These lectures, which he delivered between the years 1786 and 1796, were very highly esteemed, and speedily brought him into practice as a consulting and operating surgeon. The increase of his private practice, indeed, rendered it necessary for him, in 1796, to discontinue his lectures, and from that time forward he devoted himself to his patients, and to the preparation of the several publications of which he was the author.

For upwards of twenty years Mr Bell may be said to have stood at the head of his profession in Edinburgh as an operator. Patients came to him from all quarters, both of Scotland and England, and even from the continent; and during that interval he performed some of the most delicate and difficult operations in surgery. Nor was his celebrity confined to Edinburgh. He was generally known both in this country and throughout the world, as one of the most distinguished men in his profession; and his works show that his reputation was well founded.

Early in 1816, he was thrown by a spirited horse; and appears never to have entirely recovered from the effects of the accident In the autumn of that year he made an excursion, partly on account of his health, to London; thence he proceeded to Paris, and afterwards pursued his journey southwards, visiting the most distinguished cities of Italy. During his residence on the Continent, he was treated in the most flattering manner by the members of his own profession; and his countrymen, who, after the peace of 1815, had gone to the Continent in great numbers, gladly took his professional assistance. In Paris, Naples, and Rome in particular, his numerous patients occupied him perhaps too exclusively; for his health continued to decline, and he died at Rome, April 15, 1820, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.

Mr Bell very early in life became impressed with a high notion of the advantage of combining general accomplishments with professional skill; he therefore spared no pains to qualify himself in every way to assume a favourable position in society. He was a good classical scholar, and so general a reader that there were few works of any note in literature, either ancient or modern, with which he was not familiar. This was remarkably shown in his library, in which there was hardly a volume on any subject which did not bear traces of having been carefully perused and noted by him. His practice was to make annotations on the margin as he read; and considering the engrossing nature of his professional labours, and the several works in which he was himself engaged, nothing is more extraordinary than the evidence which is still in existence of the extent and variety of his miscellaneous reading.

The information which he thus acquired was not lost upon him; he was polished and easy in his manners his perception of the ludicrous was keen and the tact with which he availed himself of his extensive reading and general knowledge of all the interesting topics of the day, will be long remembered by those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. His conversational powers, indeed, were of the very highest order; and as he had great urbanity and kindness of manner, and was happily free from that affectation by which good talkers