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John Crawford Bell L.S.A. (1799 – 10 July 1877) was a British orthodox surgeon and apothecary who converted to homeopathy. In 1853, Bell was recorded as practicing as a surgeon at Princes Street, Norwich. By 1873 Bell had embraced homeopathy and, in addition to his Princes Street practice, was also listed at 93 High Street, Lowestoft, and at 2 Gaol Street, Great Yarmouth.

The details of his early life are sparse but John Crawford Bell was born in Ipswich in 1799. In 1825 he was admitted as a licentiate by the London Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

His movements over the next few years are unclear but by October 1832 J. C. Bell was practicing in Norwich where business was evidently successful enough for him to advertise in the Norwich Mercury newspaper for a pupil.

In March 1844, Bell, then practicing as surgeon and apothecary in Norwich, was the subject of a bankruptcy fiat.

By 1853, Bell was once again established in private practice in Norwich, listed in Mason’s Norwich General and Commercial Directory as “Bell, John Crawford, surgeon, Princes-street.” He appears both in the alphabetical directory and specifically among Norwich’s “Physicians and Surgeons.”

When precisely Bell first embraced homeopathic medicine is not evident, but his time in Norwich coincided with the town becoming an active provincial centre for homeopathy, boasting not one but two homeopathic hospitals, two periodicals, the Norwich Homeopathic Journal and the Norwich Homoeopathic Record and two homeopathic chemists, Henry Pearce and Alex Tate Rapier.  Another, arguably even more notable figure at the centre of Norwich’s homeopathy boom was Dr. William Bell, no relation. There is no extant evidence that William Bell mentored John Crawford Bell in homeopathy, but it is unlikely that they were unfamiliar with one another.

John Crawford Bell was married to Elizabeth from Colchester, Essex. She died before the 1861 census. Residing with the Bells in 1851 and still in 1861 was school mistress Elizabeth Strutt, also from Colchester.

In the 1875 Yearbook of Pharmacy, John Crawford Bell was one of the testimonial providers in an advertisement for Ipswich and London-based Scrivener, Gill, and Company’s Amynterion Magnetic Curative Appliances. These electro-magnetic devices were licensed from Phillip William Seymour, Medical Electrician at Guy’s Hospital and, later, Onslow College, South Kensington, who introduced the concept in his 1873 book Magneticon. In his testimonial, Crawford Bell noted that one of the Amynterion wearable devices had enabled him to walk “with firmness and confidence” again after a period of debilitating muscular weakness.

In the October 27, 1883 edition of Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research, Bell was mentioned by a fellow inhabitant of Norwich, George A. King, in connection with the story of Victorian “fasting girl” Elizabeth Squirrell who claimed to have survived for twenty-five weeks without food or water:

“As further confirmation of the story of Elizabeth Squirrel [sic] may I say that some years since a surgeon in this city (now deceased), Mr. J. Crawford Bell, lent me the “ Autobiography,” assuring me at the same time that the case was therein described with entire truthfulness as he had proved for himself by personal observation.”

Bell died in Norwich on 10 July, 1877 and was buried in the churchyard of St Saviour’s, Norwich. A memorial verse was written in his honour by Norwich Minister of the New Church, Robert Abbott (1814-1883), latterly of Jesmond Lodge, Malton, for the Swedenborgian journal The Intellectual Repository:

Of interest:

John Bell (4 December 1774 – 14 January 1849) [no evident relation] was a pharmacist and, in 1798, the founder of orthodox pharmaceutical firm John Bell and Co., 338 Oxford Street, London.

William Bell M.D. L.R.C.S. (c.1804 – 14 December 1886) [no evident relation] was a British homeopath who took part in a Festival in aid of the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1853. Bell was surgeon to the Queen’s County Militia, Medical Officer to the County Tipperary Workhouse and Lunatic Asylum, and later was Medical Officer to the Norwich Homoeopathic Dispensary and Hospital, before setting up in private practice in London.

James Bachelder Bell M.D. (1813 – 1914) [no evident relation] was an American homeopathic physician.

(Thomas) Vernon Bell M.D. (1824 – 1905) [no evident relation] was a Scottish-born homeopathic physician, a member of the British Homeopathic Society, and a member of the Medical Council of the London Homeopathic Hospital, who practiced in London.

In August 1858 a letter to the Medical Times and Gazette suggested that Thomas Vernon Bell, recently graduated M.D. from the University of Edinburgh, was none other than William Bell, formerly of Norwich. The letter writer deduced that William Bell M.D. (Erlangen), as holder of a foreign qualification, had changed his name and identity in order to secure a British qualification and thus ensure his entry on the new medical register.

This accusation was baseless. William and Vernon Bell, both homeopaths, were two entirely separate individuals.

Joseph Bell F.R.C.S. (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911) was a Scottish surgeon and lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, where he was a friend and teacher of homeopath John Murray Moore. He was perhaps best known as being the basis for the character of Sherlock Holmes.