despite this lukewarm response, charles bell continued to study the anatomy of the human brain and laid his focus upon the nerves connected to it. in 1821, bell published the "“on the nerves: giving an account of some experiments on their structure and functions, which lead to a new arrangement of the system”" in philosophical transactions of the royal society. this paper held bell's most famous discovery, that the facial nerve or seventh cranial nerve is a nerve of muscular action. this was quite an important discovery because surgeons would often cut this nerve as an attempted cure for facial neuralgia, but this would often render the patient with a unilateral paralysis of the facial muscles, now known as bell's palsy. due to this publication, charles bell is regarded as one of the first physicians to combine the scientific study of neuroanatomy with clinical practice.