This month, in recognition of World Blood Donor Day, we highlight an item from The College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s Historical Medical Library collection, the Manuscript of Drawings of the Arteries by Charles Bell, first published in 1801. Bell was a surgeon, artist, and anatomy teacher who made lasting contributions to surgery and neurology and played a key role in shaping medical education. Over 200 years ago, well before Gray’s Anatomy and long before simulation labs, Bell used his art and dissection labs to teach anatomy to medical students. Designed to prepare students for the surgical realities of the time, Drawings of the Arteries is a stunningly detailed atlas featuring instructional text focused on the anatomy of the vascular system. As we celebrate World Blood Donor Day on June 14, it is fitting that we honor Bell’s foundational work in understanding the body’s circulatory system, which helped pave the way for modern surgical techniques and lifesaving transfusions.
Born in Scotland in 1774, Charles Bell received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1798. While apprenticing under his older brother, John Bell, he developed his artistic skills by creating detailed anatomical diagrams. Together, the brothers authored medical textbooks on general surgery. In 1804, Charles Bell moved to England to expand his medical practice and began teaching anatomy. He established his own private anatomy school and museum, which included a collection of numerous wax models, paintings, and drawings. He taught through lectures and dissection, using sketches, paintings, diagrams, and wax models as teaching aids. Through his teaching style and artistry, Bell made a lasting impact on medical education and helping to solidify the role of art and illustration as essential tools for teaching anatomy.
In addition to his medical and scientific contributions, Bell was invested in the connection between anatomy and art. When Bell began teaching anatomy in London, he taught classes specifically for artists. His interest and emphasis on the importance of using art to help understand anatomy followed a long tradition of art in medicine. Like Renaissance figures such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who studied cadavers to better understand the human form, Bell believed that understanding anatomy and how muscles work was essential to capturing authentic human expression in art. In 1802, he published one of the first anatomy textbooks for artists, Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting, to teach artists about the underlying anatomy of facial expression. Bell’s work even influenced Darwin’s work on facial and emotional expressions in man and animals. In Darwin’s 1872 book, The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals, the first figure is a diagram of the muscles of the face by Charles Bell.
As a military surgeon in the British Army in the early 1800s, Bell treated soldiers wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, including at the Battle of Waterloo. Combining his medical expertise and artistic skills, he created graphic paintings that commemorated the wounded and served as educational tools for other medical professionals. One of the most famous works from this collection depicts a soldier suffering from tetanus following a gunshot wound, an image that many will recognize today. Bell worked to capture the facial expressions and suffering of soldiers, many of whom endured painful, often fatal injuries and underwent surgery without anesthesia. Before the advent of photography, his artwork captured the human suffering of battle, portraying soldiers with empathy and humanity.
Bell is most famous for his groundbreaking work in neurology. In 1811, he published An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, a work now considered the “Magna Carta” of Neurology. Credited as one of the early discoverers of the distinct functions of motor and sensory nerve roots, Bell is perhaps best known for his research on the cranial nerves, particularly the facial nerve. He identified its function and pathway, recognizing its connection to unilateral paralysis of the facial muscles, a condition now known as Bell’s palsy in honor of his contributions.
Charles Bell’s anatomical instruction was rooted in its time, an era when life-threatening injuries often came from sword thrusts rather than car accidents. In his Drawings of the Arteries, Bell guided future surgeons through the implications of wounds from swords and even assassins. In the manuscript, he describes how “A thrust made with a small sword on the left side of the chest, immediately above the seventh rib, perpendicularly to the convexity of the chest, will pass through the diaphragm into the stomach.” Bell’s precise drawings were essential tools for medical education in a period when illustrated textbooks played a critical role. His ability to combine his art and medical knowledge paved the way for modern medical training. As we celebrate World Blood Donor Day, we honor early pioneers like Charles Bell, whose work helped make future medical advances possible.
References
- Aminoff, Michael J, Sir Charles Bell: His Life, Art, Neurological Concepts, and Controversial Legacy (New York, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Sept. 2016), , accessed 23 May 2025.
- Bell, Charles. Engravings of the Arteries: Illustrating the Second Volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body and Serving as an Introduction to the Surgery of the Arteries. London, 1801.
- Borque, Sarah. "The Compassionate Surgeon: A Tribute to Sir Charles Bell." UT Health Science Center Library, 29 Mar. 2012,
- Dewar, Lucy, and Andreas K. Demetriades. “Art in Medicine: A Retrospective on the Anatomical Drawings of Charles Bell.” Acta Clinica Croatica, vol. 58, no. 4, 2019, pp. 737–743. doi:10.20471/acc.2019.58.04.21.
- Ekman, Paul. “Darwin's Contributions to Our Understanding of Emotional Expressions.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 364, no. 1535, 2009, pp. 3449–3451. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0189.
- Jay, Venita. "A Portrait in History: Sir Charles Bell, Artist Extraordinaire." Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, vol. 123, no. 6, June 1999, p. 463
- World Health Organization. "World Blood Donor Day." World Health Organization, . Accessed 23 May 2025.