Bell's palsy & the anatomy of the nervous system. Second edition and a handsomely bound copy of Bell's collected papers about the nerves that were presented to the Royal Society, bound together with two additional papers from the Philosophical Transactions. Garrison-Morton cites this as the second edition, presumably of the 1824 publication An Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body, with a republication of the papers presented to the Royal Society, on the subject of the nerves, which is rare in commerce. This edition 'records Bell's demonstration that the fifth cranial nerve has a sensory-motor function, his discovery of "Bell's nerve" and the motor nerve of the face, lesions of which causes facial paralysis (Bell's palsy). Also includes the first description of myotonia' (Garrison-Morton, A Medical Bibliography 1258).

Anatomist, neurologist, and artist Charles Bell (1774-1842) undertook his surgical training in Edinburgh during the 1890s, and at the same time studied art with the painter David Allen, publishing his System of Dissections, a guide for anatomy students, while himself still a student in 1798. 'In 1802 he published The Anatomy of the Brain, Explained in a Series of Engravings. He provided his own illustrations to this work, and insisted that in this department of anatomy in particular the task could not be left to an artist who lacked a training in the field... Along with [his brother] John Bell he also published an Anatomy of the Human Body. Charles's special contribution on the anatomy of the brain and nerves appeared in 1804. The work passed through numerous editions' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

As a surgeon in London after 1804 Bell continued developing his interest in the nervous system, and set out to show that the brain was not an undifferentiated mass, but that its parts had separate functions, which could be proved anatomically by severing the nerves leading to the rest of the body. The results were published in 1811 in Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain, though priority for the more sophisticated and correct version of the discovery is usually awarded to the French physiologist François Magendie.

First edition; 4to (265 x 21 cm); 9 plates of which 1 is double-page in the primary text, 3 plates in the following paper, and 1 plate in the final paper, one small pencil note in the margin of page 65, occasional small spots and marks but overall contents clean; recently rebound to style in quarter tan calf, floral tools to compartments, red morocco label, marbled boards, new endpapers, excellent condition; 238 plus clxxvi appendix, 471-483, & 255-262pp.

Garrison-Morton, A Medical Bibliography 1258.