Charles Bell (November 12, 1774 - April 28, 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, and neurologist. He published detailed studies of the nervous system in 1811, in his privately circulated book An Idea of a New Anatomy of the Brain. He described his experiments with animals and how he was the first to distinguish between sensory and motor nerves. This essay is considered by many to be the founding stone of clinical neurology. He combined his artistic, scientific, literary and teaching talents in a number of wax preparations and detailed anatomical and surgical illustrations, paintings and engravings in his books on these subjects. A number of discoveries received his name: Bell's nerve: the long thoracic nerve, Bell's palsy: a unilateral idiopathic paralysis of facial muscles due to a lesion of the facial nerve, Bell's phenomenon: an upward movement of the eye and the eyelid which occurs when a person affected with Bell's paralysis tries to close the eye, Bell's spasm: involuntary twitching of the facial muscles, and Bell-Magendie law: which states that the anterior branch of spinal nerve roots contain only motor fibers and the posterior roots contain only sensory fibers. He died in 1842 at the age of 67.