Robert Bell (physician)

Robert Bell FRFPS (6 January 1845 – 21 January 1926) was an English physician and medical writer. He specialised in gynaecology and oncology and was vice-president of the International Cancer Research Society. He was also a naturopath and published several books on cancer and other diseases. Bell was an advocate for alternative cancer treatments, including raw foodism and vegetarianism. His promotion of such treatments led to the oncologist Ernest Francis Bashford accusing him of quackery in the British Medical Journal; Bell successfully sued Bashford and the journal for libel.

Life and career
Bell was born in Alnwick, on 6 January 1845. He studied at the University of Glasgow and in Paris. Bell started practicing medicine in Glasgow in 1868. He worked for 21 years at the Glasgow Samaritan Hospital for Women as a senior physician.

Bell moved to London in 1904. In 1909, he declined an offer of a baronetcy. He was a council member of the Order of the Golden Age, and the vice president of the International Cancer Research Society. Bell advocated fasting and a diet of uncooked vegetables and fruit, along with eggs and dairy as an optimal diet for maintaining health.

Bell later led cancer research at Battersea Anti-Vivisection Hospital and worked to publicise his view that surgical treatment for cancer was unnecessary and that cancer was preventable by dietetic and hygienic measures. Bell recommended his cancer patients fresh air and a vegetarian diet of uncooked vegetables, nuts and dairy products. An article by the noted oncologist Ernest Francis Bashford published by the British Medical Journal, in 1911, accused Bell of quackery for his alternative cancer treatments; he successfully sued the author and journal for libel and was awarded £2,000 damages plus costs.

In 1923, Bell was charged with an allegation of breaching medical etiquette. The charge was that he had prescribed treatment for and attended to a woman with cancer without having seen her in person. However, he was cleared of these charges.

Bell published his autobiography in 1924, Reminiscences of an Old Physician. He died in London on 20 January 1926, at the age of 81; his funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium.

Personal life
Bell was married three times. His first marriage was to Christina Catherine Alexander in 1869 in Govan, Scotland, and they had four children together, Robert, Annie, Margaret and Alistair, before she died in 1891. In 1893, he married Mary Allan Dobie in Keir, Scotland, who died in 1899. His third marriage was to Clara Ellen Ross (née Sims) at St Mary Abbotts in Kensington, in 1900.

Selected publications

 * Sterility (London: Churchill, 1896)
 * The Pathogenesis and Treatment of Cancer Without Operation (Glasgow: R.L. Holmes, 1900)
 * Ten Years' Record of the Treatment of Cancer Without Operation (London: Dean, 1906)
 * Health at Its Best V. Cancer (London: Unwin, 1908)
 * Cancer and Its Remedy (London: Medical Times Pub. Co., 1909)
 * "The Cancer Enigma" (Medical Record, 1920)
 * "Cancer is a Blood Disease and Should be Treated as Such" (Medical Record, 1922)
 * Reminiscences of an Old Physician (London: Murray, 1924)