BELL.
BELL.
Atlanta campaign, winning jJromotion on the
battlefield. He received the commission of brig-
adier-general in July, 1864, and succeeded to the
command of an Iowa brigade. His brevet rank
of major-general of volunteers was accorded him
on March 13, 1865. On his being mustered out at
the close of the war he refused a commission in
the regvdar army, and was appointed collector of
internal revenue in the district of Iowa. On Oct.
13, 1869, he was appointed secretary of Avar in the
cabinet of President Grant, and retained that
position in Grant's second administration imtil
March 7, 1876, when, upon being charged with
corruption in office, he resigned, after earnest
protestations to the President that he was guilt-
less of any complicity in the matters charged.
Afterwards the house of representatives presented
him to the senate for impeachment, but the pro-
ceedings were quashed for want of jurisdiction,
and the vote taken upon his guilt resulted in
thirty-seven ayes and twenty-three nays. Sen-
ator Carpenter, who defended Secretary Belknap,
declared the entire innocence of his client,
and purposed, should he outlive the ex-secretary,
to clear his memory and place the blame where
it belonged. Carpenter's death in 1881 prevented
this act of justice Mr. Belknap, after leaving the
cabinet, made his home in Philadelphia, but in
1876 returned to Washington, where he took up
the practice of law. On Oct. 13, 1890, he was
foimd dead in his room, and the attending phys-
icians gave the date of his death as Oct. 12, 1890.
BELL, Agrippa Nelson, physician, was born
in Northampton county, Va., Aug. 3, 1820. He
received an academical education, and pursued
his medical course at the Tremont street medical
school, Boston, in the medical school at Harvard
college, and at the Jefferson medical college in
Philadelphia, where he received his degree
March, 1812. He practised as a physician at
Franktown, Va. In 1847 he was commissioned
as siu-geon in the navy, served in the Gulf
squadron during the Mexican war, and was for a
time attached to the yellow fever hospital on
Salmadina Island, near Vera Cruz. He served
on the Spanish Main, in the West Indies, on the
west coast of Africa and at the New York navy
yard, and resigned from the navy in 1855. He
resumed the practice of medicine at Brooklyn
and attained distinction for his services in 1856,
when yellow fever prevailed at Bay Ridge and
Fort Hamilton. Hq early advocated the use of
steam for disinfecting purix)ses. In 1861 the New
York commissioners of quarantine employed Dr.
Bell as medical superintendent of the floating
hospital for the special care of yellow fever in the
lower bay. From 1870 to 1873 he was. by appoint-
ment of Governor Hoffman, supervising commis-
sioner of quarantine. In 1873 he established the
Sanitarian, a monthly magazine devoted to the
interests of public health. On the national board
of health, June, 1879, Dr. Bell was chosen as one
of the inspectors of quarantine, and assigned to
duty on the Atlantic coast, but in August of the
same year he was transferred to New Orleans on
the outbreak of yellow fever in that city. From
New Orleans Dr. BeU proceeded to Vicksburg,
and thence to Memphis, where he organized and
instituted the hoiLse-to-house inspection service
which resulted in the purification of that city.
The honorary degree of A.M. was conferred upon
him by Trinity college, in 1859. The New York
state medical society, American medical associa-
tion, American public health association, Ameri-
can climatological association, Kings coimty med-
ical society. Kings county medical association and
New York medico-legal society made him a regu-
lar member, and he was made honorary member
of the Connecticut state medical society, and of
the Societe Francaise d'hygifene, and coiTespond-
ing member of the Epidemiological society,
London. Dr. Bell's publications include : "Quar-
antine " (1856) ; " Knowledge of Living Things "
(1860) ; " Malignant Pustule " (1862) ; " Disinfec-
tion of Vessels" (1863); "How Complete is the
Protection of Vaccination';" (1864); "Medical
Progress" (1870).
BELL, Alexander Graham, inventor, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847 ; son of Alexander Melville and Eliza Grace Bell. His education was conducted with a special view to his continuance of the life-work of his father and grandfather, both of whom had achieved notable success in the invention and improvement of methods for instructing persons born deaf and dumb, or with some impediment of speech. He attended the Edinburgh high school and the Ed- inburgh university, after which he entered the London university, where he remained some three years, when ill-health compelled him to resign his studies. In 1870 he accompanied his father to Canada, where he again took up his studies, and two years later removed to Boston, Mass., where he was employed as a teacher of deaf-mutes, and later became professor of vocal physiology in Bos- ton university. As early as 1867 he began the study of the problem of conveying articulate sounds by electricity, and devised a number of more or less perfect contrivances, before evolving the telephone, which he exliibited for the first time at the Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876. He filed an application for a patent for a speaking telephone, Feb. 14, 1876. Companies were organized, exchanges established, and by 1879 the Bell telephone had become a com- mercial and social necessity, not only in America, but in Europe. Mr. BeU and his backers reaped large fortunes, despite the fact that hundreds
