Joseph Bell (medic)

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Joseph Bell as a lecturer in Edinburgh

Joseph Bell ( December 2, 1837 - October 4, 1911 ) was a Scottish surgeon , pediatrician and military doctor and is considered a pioneer of forensics .

Life

Bell came from a family of doctors who had achieved a certain prominence in Edinburgh since the 18th century . In 1859 he graduated from Edinburgh Medical School and became assistant to James Syme ( Joseph Lister's father-in-law ) in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh . Soon he was also working as a lecturer in surgery and was also working in the university's anatomy department. Bell was examiner of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for 42 years and its president in 1889.

In his lectures, Bell stressed the importance of precise observations in diagnosis ( Observe carefully, deduce shrewdly. ) To illustrate this, he often took a stranger and derived from his observations the occupation and recent activities of that person. In doing so, Bell created something completely new. In the courtroom, people began to no longer rely solely on the testimony of witnesses , but to employ forensic technology procedures to secure evidence and admit it as evidence. In 1874 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Bell gave the Royal Infirmary nursing staff the opportunity to attend a wound visit (bedside teaching) every Sunday. Linda Richards (1841–1930), the first American registered nurse, was one of the participants in this visit to the wound .

Arthur Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877. A year later, Doyle was working as his assistant at the Royal Infirmary. Doyle was fascinated by Bell's talent for combination and designed the character of Sherlock Holmes loosely based on this model. For his Dr. Watson, he resorted to another teacher (and colleague of Bell), the surgeon Patrick Heron Watson .

Bell wrote several medical treatises and was the personal physician of Queen Victoria when in Scotland was staying. When Jack the Ripper killed at least five prostitutes in London in 1888, Bell investigated the case with colleague Henry Littlejohn . The reports they sent to Scotland Yard are lost.

Joseph Bell's grave in Edinburgh

Aftermath

The BBC television series Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes was an exaggerated portrayal of Doyle's time as Bell's assistant, in which the importance of Bell to Holmes' character was overemphasized. Doyle was here with Dr. Watson equal. Bell was portrayed in the series by Ian Richardson . In the comic series Professor Bell by Joann Sfar (in collaboration with Hervé Tanquerelle ), started in 1999 , the work of Joseph Bell is told in a heavily exaggerated form.

At the University of Edinburgh there was a “Joseph Bell Center for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning” from 2001 in cooperation with the Glasgow Caledonian University .

Fonts

  • A Manual of the Operations of Surgery. London 1883. ( online )

literature

  • Wallace Edwards: The Real Life Sherlock Holmes: A Biography of Joseph Bell - The True Inspiration of Sherlock Holmes and the Pioneer of Forensic Science. CreateSpace Independent 2013. ISBN 978-1482603538 .
  • Ely M. Liebow: Dr. Joe Bell: Model for Sherlock Holmes. Popular Press 1982. ISBN 978-0879721985 .
  • Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, pp. 286–289.
  • Barbara F. Westmoreland, Jack D. Key: Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Bell, and Sherlock Holmes: A Neurologic Connection. In: Archives of Neurology , 1991; 48 (3): 325-329. doi : 10.1001 / archneur.1991.00530150097025

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Edward E. Harnagel: Joseph Bell, MD - The Real Sherlock Holmes. In: The New England Journal of Medicine , June 5, 1958. pp. 1158–15. doi : 10.1056 / NEJM195806052582307
  2. ↑ Barbara F. Westmoreland, Jack D. Key: Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Bell, and Sherlock Holmes: A Neurologic Connection. In: Archives of Neurology , 1991; 48 (3): 325-329. doi : 10.1001 / archneur.1991.00530150097025
  3. ^ A b Katherine Ramsland: Observe Carefully, Deduce Shrewdly: Dr. Joseph Bell. In: The Forensic Examiner , Fall 2009. Page 77ff.
  4. ^ Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 8, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Linda Richards: Reminiscences of Linda Richards, America's First Trained Nurse. Classic Reprint Series, Forgotten Books FB & cLtd., London 2018, p. 50 f.
  6. ↑ Dominic Selwood: On this day in 1859: The birth of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. In: The Daily Telegraph , May 22, 2017.
  7. ↑ Internet presence of the Joseph Bell Center ( Memento from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Bell, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish surgeon, pediatrician and military doctor and is considered a pioneer in forensics
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1837
DATE OF DEATH October 4, 1911