The next year was another important landmark in Charles Bell’s life. He accepted an offer of partnership with Mr. Wilson in the Great Windmill Street School of Medicine. His own preparations and drawings, &c., were added to the museum already there, and his joy at seeing the two united was great and unmixed. His first lecture in the school was to a class of 80 to 100 pupils. He was at the height of his ambition in being connected with the celebrated Windmill Street School. Mr., afterwards Sir Benjamin, Brodie, Dr. Roget, and Dr. Brande were among his associates in lecturing. His new house (34 Soho Square) had as many resident pupils as he could accommodate; and he was not yet forty years old. In 1813 he was admitted into the Royal College of Surgeons. A formal examination being necessary, he records with amusement that the facetious dogs asked him of what disease he thought Buonaparte would die. In 1814 he was elected by a large majority surgeon to Middlesex Hospital, and immediately began to make great use of his new opportunities. His operations and clinical lectures soon became attended by large numbers of students, and even eminent practitioners. A Russian General, Baron Driesen, having a ball in his thigh, was placed under his care, and especially commended to him by the Czar Alexander. A fee of £200 and two silver cups were his reward, as well as great personal regard from both the General and his aide-de-camp. When the stirring news of Waterloo arrived in London, the same spirit which had animated him after Corunna, impelled Mr. Bell to start off, accompanied by John Shaw, to render assistance to the wounded. The amount of work was appalling. Nothing was ready, to cope with the mass of misery suddenly accumulated. Mr. Bell, finding after an inspection of the situation that he could do most by taking in hand the needful operations upon the French wounded, commenced his operations at six one morning and continued incessantly operating till seven in the evening, and so on for three consecutive days. While he amputated one man’s thigh, there lay at one time thirteen others waiting, all begging to be taken next. “It was a strange thing,” he says, “to feel my clothes stiff with blood, and my arms powerless with the exertion of using the knife; and more extraordinary still, to find my mind calm amidst such variety of suffering; but to give one of these objects access to your feelings was to allow yourself to be unmanned for the performance of a duty.”