Page:The Hunterian Oration1843.djvu/5

 will content myself with touching upon a few of the more prominent points of his genius and character.

As a surgeon Sir Charles Bell ranks high, “ if not first, in the very first line.” His Letters on the Diseases of the Urethra, his Surgical Observations, and other works, show how deeply he had studied, and how diligently he had practised, the art which he professed. His dexterity and coolness as an ope- rator were remarkable; yet he went to operations with the reluctance of one who has to face an una- voidable evil; in this respect resembling Hunter, and many other first-rate surgeons. Like Cheselden, who is said always to have turned pale when about to cut for the stone, Bell’s cheek was often seen to blanch on proceeding to operations performed with the utmost self-possession and skill.

As a proof of the zeal with which Mr. Bell cul- tivated surgery, I may instance his hurrying to Haslar after the battle of Corunna, and to Waterloo after that of the 18th of June, in order to study gunshot wounds.

Still more eminent was he as a teacher of anatomy. In the lecture-room he shone almost without a rival, His views were nearly always solid ; they were always ingenious, and his manner and language enchained the attention of his audience. Dull, indeed, must have been the pupil who could have slumbered when Charles Bell was in the professorial chair. In his hands dry bones lived again, imagination clothing them with the textures which had once invested them; a muscle was no longer a mere bundle of fibres, rising here and inserted there ; it was a guide