JAMES SIMPSON 1811-1870

                   James Young Simpson was born on 7^th June 1811 in the little town of Bathgate not far from Edinburgh where his father, David, was the Main Street baker. His mother bore one daughter and seven sons of whom James was the youngest.

                  James was a very able pupil at school, but he always maintained that his mother, to whom he was very devoted, was his best teacher. Her death while he was still a boy, was a sore blow to him, but his sister, Mary, became his “second mother” and looked af­ter him well. He never forgot his mother and he could never see a woman mending her child’s dress without a tear coming to his eye. He was very fond of children who may have led him into his specialist medi­cal field and when, at the height of his fame, he visited his old school, he offered an annual prize for the best darner, reckoning that there were already enough prizes for academic pursuits.

                   In view of his scholastic ability his elder brothers decided that they would support him at university so, at the age of 14, he went to Edinburgh to enroll for a Master of Arts degree. He was young, poor, and very lonely away from his loving sister but kept him well-supplied with food and clothes. He shared accommodation with two hard-work­ing students who were studying medicine and young James fell into their work hab­its. He also absorbed their love for medi­cine and some evenings he would go with them to bear lectures. James switched to the study of medicine in 1827, when he was 16 years of age.

                  He was not long into his studentship when he almost gave it up, so terrible were the sights that he had to endure, in the operat­ing theatres. There were no anaesthetics so that the patient had often to be dragged screaming to the theatre and held down by four or five men while the surgeon per­formed the operation with the patient fully conscious. Nor only had the patient to endure terrible pain; sometimes the shock of the operation was fatal. Surgeons had to work fast.

                 Fortunately Simpson decided to continue and it was he who was to take the terror out of operations. He graduated M. D.* in 1832.

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* M.D. — Doctor of Medicine

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               After three months travelling in Europe, with money generally provided by his brothers, he settled down to general medicine in Edinburgh and in time built up a large and very successful practice. But always his eye was on midwifery and when the Chair* in that subject fell vacant he applied for the post and was appointed professor in 1839.

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* Chair— the office, position, or official seat of.

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                 Perhaps he did not have stiff opposition. Midwifery was considered the lowliest of subjects — birth was considered a fairly routine matter despite the attendant deaths, and women’s medical problems were not considered worthy of any special attention.

                 Professor Simpson was an immediate and brilliant success. Students flocked to his classes, so that soon it was a case of “stand­ing-room only”. The Midwifery class became the largest in the University. Since this was a time when students paid their fees direct to the professor who taught the class, Simpson was on his way to becoming rich. He married, moved into a splendid home, and could even afford a carriage.

                 His fame was spreading. Queen Victoria appointed him one of Her Majesty’s physicians in Scotland in 1847.

                 Simpson had long been interested in ways of relieving pain and suffering, and had even dabbled in hypnosis finding that he had con­siderable powers in this field. One of his great successes was manifested at a dinner party. He hypnotised a young lady sitting next to him and then forbade her to speak until he gave her permission to do so. Un­fortunately he was called from the room and when he returned some time later he found the young lady literally and metaphorically speechless. She had expressed her anger in writing. He gave up the idea of applying hypnosis to medicine, not became of this incident, but because he found that it was very erratic in its application.

       Simpson turned to the use of anaesthetics. Exciting news was coming out of America. Although the distinguished chemist, Sir Hum­phrey Davy* in England, experimenting on himself, had shown that nitrous oxide was “capable of destroying physical pain — and may be used with advantage during surgical operatons”, this finding had lain dormant for about 40 years, till Mr Colton**, lecturing on nitrous oxide gas at Harvard, Connecticut, impressed a dentist, Mr Horace Wells (1815-1898), a member of the audience, by demon­strating its properties on an subject who fell and bruised himself without apparently feel­ing any pain.

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* Davy, Humphrey— English chemist.

** Colton, Gardner Quincy (1814-1898) — founder of the New York Dental Institute.

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             Next day Wells offered himself as a guinea pig and had Colton administer gas to him while a fellow dentist, Dr Rigg, extracted a tooth. Wells suffered no pain and this was certainly a landmark in dentistry.

             But it was more than that. It led to the testing of other gases and a very young den­tist named Morton*, in 1846, tried out ether** on himself, and was insensible for eight minutes.

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* Morton, William Thomas Green (1819-1868) — US dentist who in 1846 with Charles Thomas Jackson (1805-1880). a chemist and physician, introduced ether as an anaesthetic.

** ether — a light colourless gas used formely as an anaesthetic to put people sleep before an operation.

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               Later, he administrated ether to patient and extracted a tooth. He realized that it could be used for bigger and longer operations that tooth extraction and within a few weeks it was being used anaesthetist.

               Simpson knew of this work that was going on in the USA, and he used ether as an ana­esthetic on the mother while delivering a child on the 19^th January 1847. It was a land­mark and it went well; but still he was not completely satisfied. Ether had a disagree­able smell and was inclined to irritate the lining of the nose. Like Morton before him, Simpson experimented on himself in his search for a “drowsy syrup” and he went around inhaling all sorts of vapours, putting his own life at risk in the process. Happily he survived.

               Mr Waldie, a chemist from Liverpool sent Simpson a small quantity of the chemical “perchloride of formyle” (chloroform) and suggested to him that it might be worthy of trial. On the 4^th November 1847 Simp­son and his assistant tried it. When they opened the bottle they became bright-eyed, very happy, and very loquacious-expatiating on the delicious aroma of the new flu­id. But suddenly they fell asleep. On awak­ening, Dr Simpson understood that chlo­roform was far stronger and better than ether.

                By 1895, Duncan and Flockhart, the firm that had supplied the first sample of chlo­roform to Simpson, were producing three-quarters of a million dozens a week.

                One of the first surgical cases, a soldier, on which chloroform was used, enjoyed the experience so much that on waking up “he seized the sponge, with which administra­tion had been made and thrusting it into his mouth, again resumed inhalation more vigorously than before, as if it were too good a thing to be stopped so soon.”

                But Simpson had to face some pretty stiff opposition, especially from men, who did not feel that it was right “to interfere with Na­ture”. There was also a storm of invective from those who believed that the use of chlo­roform undermined religion. Some doctors believed that the cold steel of the surgeon’s knife was a good tonic, some believed much more realistically, that a “number of death” were due to the use of chloroform.

               But it was not until Queen Victoria gave birth to prince Leopold while anaesthetized by chloroform, that the opposition began to wither away. What was good enough for the Queen was good enough for everyone. Surgery without chloroform became un­thinkable.

               Honours began to pour in on Simpson. Queen Victoria made him a baronet in 1886. He received the Freedom of Edinburgh*, and was given an Honorary degree by Oxford University.

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*freedom of the city — the right to be a full member of a city, which may be given to someone by a city council in Britain.

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               He was made an Associate of the Imperial College of Medicine, Paris, he re­ceived the Order of St. Olaf from Sweden....

               The long years of hard work and the great sorrows (he lost 4 members of his family (three children and sister) were taking their toll. His health was failing, and he died on 6^th May, 1870. His family was offered a rest­ing place for him in Westminster Abbey, but his wife declined the honour, feeling that he would prefer to be buried in Edinburgh.