Gun Shot Wounds.

Charles Bell

Gun Shot Wounds.

London

Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown

1814

Sir Charles Bell, the brilliant early 19th-century Scottish surgeon and anatomist, had already made a name for himself for discovering the difference between motor (moving) nerves and sensory (feeling) nerves in the spinal cord and for describing the paralysis of the face known today as Bell’s palsy. He was also a gifted artist. In this book we have a rare example of both a practicing surgeon and an artist depicting the effects and toll of war on the human body. The paintings are stark and haunting; they serve as a reminder of what these open battles were like and the destruction rendered. Because of such war wounds during and after World War I, modern plastic surgery made many of its greatest advances.