John Bell, the second son of the Rev. William Bell, a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, was educated for the medical profession by his father’s choice, in gratitude for the relief he had received by means of a difficult surgical operation about a month before his son’s birth, in 1763. He was apprenticed to Alexander Wood, a well-known surgeon in 1779, for five years. He attended the lectures of Black, Cullen, and the second Monro, and became a fellow of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in 1786. Monro not being an operating surgeon, John Bell saw many defects in his teaching as to the applications of anatomy to surgery. In fact, surgical anatomy was never adequately taught in Edinburgh till he himself commenced to teach, and actual dissection was little thought of. He says, “In Dr. Monro’s class, unless there be a fortunate succession of bloody murders, not three subjects are dissected in the year. On the remains of a subject fished up from the bottom of a tub of spirits are demonstrated those delicate nerves which are to be avoided or divided in our operations; and these are demonstrated once at the distance of one hundred feet, nerves and arteries which the surgeon has to dissect, at the peril of his patient’s life.”[11] Immediately after qualifying, therefore, John Bell commenced lecturing on anatomy and surgery on his own account, an audacious proceeding which did not fail to draw down upon him the antagonism of all those who stood by the old lines. He was vigorous in his denunciation of the stereotyped methods and imperfections of the old school of Monro and Benjamin Bell. He built a house for his courses and practical work in Surgeons’ Square, where he carried on his work after 1790. He soon came into popularity, and this increased as his style became more polished and formed, being in fact the most graphic which had appeared in the Edinburgh Medical School. He was a masterly descriptive writer, and used all the charms of style to give interest to his subject. Consequently his opponents said that he romanced and exaggerated. He stuck to his text that surgery must be based upon anatomy and pathology; and unfortunately aroused the bitterest opposition of James Gregory, who first published an anonymous pamphlet entitled “A Guide to the Medical Students attending the University of Edinburgh,” warning students against attending John Bell’s lectures. The next attack was a “Review of the Writings of John Bell, Surgeon in Edinburgh, by Jonathan Dawplucker.” This malignant attack, says Bell, was stuck up like a playbill, in a most conspicuous and unusual manner, on every corner of the city; on the door of my lecture-room, on the gates of the college, where my pupils could not but pass, and on the gates of the infirmary, where I went to perform my operations.