Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/180

 BELL

Insane at Providence, Rhode Island, an institution then in contemplation, the trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital gave him leave of absence to visit hospitals and asylums in Europe that he might devise a plan which should embody the best-known construction of that period. The Butler Hospital stands to-day as a monument to his taste and judgment.

He was one of the founders, in 1844, of the Association of Medical Superintend- ents of American Institutions for the Insane, now the American Medico- Psychological Association. At a meeting of the Association of the Medical Super- intendents of American Institutions for the Insane, held in May, 1849, he read a paper. "On a form of disease resem- bling some advanced stages of mania and fever, but so contradistinguished from any ordinarily observed or described combination of symptoms as to render it probable that it may be an overlooked and hitherto unrecorded malady." This is the malady to which his own name has been given as " Bell's Disease," which others have called typhomania, and upon his description and study of which much of his fame as an alienist rests.

He was frequently called as an expert in insanity in the courts. In 1S50 he be- came a member of the Executive Council of Gov. Briggs, serving for one year. While acting in this capacity he passed upon the famous case of Prof. Webster of Harvard University, who was executed for the murder of Dr. George Parkman.

In 1856 he resigned the superintend- ency of the McLean Asylum, on account of ill health, to retire to private life in Charlestown, Massachusetts, but on the outbreak of the Civil War he was among the first to offer his services to the government; enlisted as surgeon with the Eleventh Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, but soon promoted to the position of brigade surgeon to Gen. Hooker's division on the lower Potomac. He died in camp at Budd's Ferry, Maryland, suddenly, from pulmonary disease, February 11, 1862. Less than a

! BELL

month before his death he wrote to a friend: "'Sudley Church,' with its hun- dred wounded victims, will form a picture in my sick dreams so long as I live. I never have spent one night out of camp since I came into it, and a bed and myself have been practically strangers these seven months. Yet I never have had one beginning of a regret at my decision to devote what may be left of life and ability to the great cause. I have, as you know, four young mother- less children. Painful as it is to leave such a charge, even in the worthiest hands, I have forced myself into recon- ciliation by the reflection that the great issue under the stern arbitrament of arms is, whether or not our children are to have a country. My own health and strength have amazed me. I have re- called a hundred times your remark that 'a man's lungs were the strongest part of him.' It has so proved with me. Had I another page, I should run on with a narrative of my exploits on horseback, excursions, reviews, etc., which some- times make me question whether, in the language of our 'spiritualistic' friends, I have not left the form; and certainly. I have entered on another sphere."

It has been said of Luther Vose Bell that nature was lavish to him in physical as well as in mental gifts. He was much above the common stature, and the grace of his carriage was perhaps height- ened by a certain negligence in his dress. G. A. B.

Memoir of Dr. Bell. American Journal of

Insanity, Utica, October, 1854. Ibid., April,

1862.

Association Reminiscences and Reflections,

Andrew McFarland, M. D. Ibid., January,

1878.

Bell, Theodore S. (1807-1884).

Theodore Bell was born of obscure parentage in Lexington, beginning life as a newsboy and later, after a six years' apprenticeship, working as a tailor. While so doing he studied medicine and in 1832 graduated at the Transylvania University, the same year moved to Louisville and began practice.