Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/281

 BELL.

BELL.

Atlanta campaign, winning jJromotion on the battlefield. He received the commission of brig- adier-general in July, 1864, and succeeded to the command of an Iowa brigade. His brevet rank of major-general of volunteers was accorded him on March 13, 1865. On his being mustered out at the close of the war he refused a commission in the regvdar army, and was appointed collector of internal revenue in the district of Iowa. On Oct. 13, 1869, he was appointed secretary of Avar in the cabinet of President Grant, and retained that position in Grant's second administration imtil March 7, 1876, when, upon being charged with corruption in office, he resigned, after earnest protestations to the President that he was guilt- less of any complicity in the matters charged. Afterwards the house of representatives presented him to the senate for impeachment, but the pro- ceedings were quashed for want of jurisdiction, and the vote taken upon his guilt resulted in thirty-seven ayes and twenty-three nays. Sen- ator Carpenter, who defended Secretary Belknap, declared the entire innocence of his client, and purposed, should he outlive the ex-secretary, to clear his memory and place the blame where it belonged. Carpenter's death in 1881 prevented this act of justice Mr. Belknap, after leaving the cabinet, made his home in Philadelphia, but in 1876 returned to Washington, where he took up the practice of law. On Oct. 13, 1890, he was foimd dead in his room, and the attending phys- icians gave the date of his death as Oct. 12, 1890. BELL, Agrippa Nelson, physician, was born in Northampton county, Va., Aug. 3, 1820. He received an academical education, and pursued his medical course at the Tremont street medical school, Boston, in the medical school at Harvard college, and at the Jefferson medical college in Philadelphia, where he received his degree March, 1812. He practised as a physician at Franktown, Va. In 1847 he was commissioned as siu-geon in the navy, served in the Gulf squadron during the Mexican war, and was for a time attached to the yellow fever hospital on Salmadina Island, near Vera Cruz. He served on the Spanish Main, in the West Indies, on the west coast of Africa and at the New York navy yard, and resigned from the navy in 1855. He resumed the practice of medicine at Brooklyn and attained distinction for his services in 1856, when yellow fever prevailed at Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton. Hq early advocated the use of steam for disinfecting purix)ses. In 1861 the New York commissioners of quarantine employed Dr. Bell as medical superintendent of the floating hospital for the special care of yellow fever in the lower bay. From 1870 to 1873 he was. by appoint- ment of Governor Hoffman, supervising commis- sioner of quarantine. In 1873 he established the

Sanitarian, a monthly magazine devoted to the interests of public health. On the national board of health, June, 1879, Dr. Bell was chosen as one of the inspectors of quarantine, and assigned to duty on the Atlantic coast, but in August of the same year he was transferred to New Orleans on the outbreak of yellow fever in that city. From New Orleans Dr. BeU proceeded to Vicksburg, and thence to Memphis, where he organized and instituted the hoiLse-to-house inspection service which resulted in the purification of that city. The honorary degree of A.M. was conferred upon him by Trinity college, in 1859. The New York state medical society, American medical associa- tion, American public health association, Ameri- can climatological association, Kings coimty med- ical society. Kings county medical association and New York medico-legal society made him a regu- lar member, and he was made honorary member of the Connecticut state medical society, and of the Societe Francaise d'hygifene, and coiTespond- ing member of the Epidemiological society, London. Dr. Bell's publications include : "Quar- antine " (1856) ; " Knowledge of Living Things " (1860) ; " Malignant Pustule " (1862) ; " Disinfec- tion of Vessels" (1863); "How Complete is the Protection of Vaccination';" (1864); "Medical Progress" (1870).

BELL, Alexander Graham, inventor, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847 ; son of Alexander Melville and Eliza Grace Bell. His education was conducted with a special view to his continuance of the life-work of his father and grandfather, both of whom had achieved notable success in the invention and improvement of methods for instructing persons born deaf and dumb, or with some impediment of speech. He attended the Edinburgh high school and the Ed- inburgh university, after which he entered the London university, where he remained some three years, when ill-health compelled him to resign his studies. In 1870 he accompanied his father to Canada, where he again took up his studies, and two years later removed to Boston, Mass., where he was employed as a teacher of deaf-mutes, and later became professor of vocal physiology in Bos- ton university. As early as 1867 he began the study of the problem of conveying articulate sounds by electricity, and devised a number of more or less perfect contrivances, before evolving the telephone, which he exliibited for the first time at the Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876. He filed an application for a patent for a speaking telephone, Feb. 14, 1876. Companies were organized, exchanges established, and by 1879 the Bell telephone had become a com- mercial and social necessity, not only in America, but in Europe. Mr. BeU and his backers reaped large fortunes, despite the fact that hundreds