FOOTNOTES:
[3] Surgery, Past, Present and Future, 1877.
[4] Henry Smith, Biographical Sketch of Sir W. Fergusson.
[CHAPTER XV.]
SIR JAMES SIMPSON AND ANÆSTHETICS.
Future ages will perceive in the history of medicine and surgery in the nineteenth century no more remarkable event than the discovery and the introduction of means for relieving and temporarily abolishing pain. And although the name of Simpson is by no means the only one honourably associated with this discovery, his achievement in the introduction of chloroform places him on an enviable pinnacle of greatness.
James Young Simpson, the seventh son and eighth child of a small baker, was born at Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, on the 7th of June 1811. His birth took place when his father’s circumstances were at the lowest ebb. Several of the family, including his mother, had but just recovered from fever. The mother had to rise from her maternal pain to take an active part in business, which she did most energetically and successfully. Her religious character and her thrifty habits deeply impressed the little boy, and he pleasingly recalled in after years her injunction, when she had just darned a big hole in his stocking, “My Jamie, when your mother’s away, you will mind that she was a grand darner.” She died when James was but nine years old, leaving him in the care of his only sister Mary, eleven years older, who proved a tender foster mother. Already as a child James Simpson became known as “the wise wean,” “the young philosopher,” and his voice was sweet and silvery. His industry and retentiveness of memory early gave promise of distinction, which all the family were persuaded would fall to his lot. And he would readily, book in hand, keep the shop for a time, or run with rolls to the laird’s house. “I remember,” says his brother Alexander,[5] “finding him sitting in the street on a very dusty day, sobbing bitterly, the tears running down his cheeks covered with dust. ‘What ails you, Jamie?’ I said, and he answered, sobbing as if his heart would break, ‘I’ve broken the pony’s knees.’” It turned out that Alexander himself had overridden the pony, so that it could not help stumbling.
The father of the family trusted his children in a peculiar way. All were regarded as equally concerned in the family prosperity, and the shop till was unfastened, and free to all; each habitually thought of the general good first. In this way the household prospered ever after James’s birth, and he personally received unremitting attention.
At the age of fourteen James Simpson entered Edinburgh University, “a very very young and very solitary, very poor and almost friendless student,” as he himself said forty years after. For two years he pursued classical and mathematical studies, gaining a small bursary before his second session. One of his earliest purchases was a little book on “The Economy of Human Life,” for which he gave ninepence. An extract from it which he wrote in his cash-book is significant of his temper of mind: “Let not thy recreations be expensive, lest the pain of purchasing them exceed the pleasure thou hast in their enjoyment.” Though an economical student, however, his literary tastes were wide, as he early bought Byron’s Giaour and Childe Harold, and Paley’s Natural Theology. He lodged with Dr. Macarthur, a former usher in the Bathgate School, together with John Reid, an old schoolfellow, afterwards Professor of Anatomy at St. Andrews, in the upper flat of a tall house in Adam Street. Reid’s enthusiasm for anatomy seem to have first inspired Simpson to choose medicine as a profession.
In the winter of 1827 James Simpson entered as a medical student in the University, and, attending Liston’s class on surgery, soon became conspicuous. He took full notes of lectures, and was freely critical of his teachers. He became a dresser under Liston, and received excellent testimonials from him. But he shrank from surgery, having an exquisite tenderness of heart which almost drove him from the profession. After witnessing on one occasion a poor woman’s agony under amputation of the breast, he started off directly to seek employment as a writer’s (or lawyer’s) clerk. He soon returned, however, deeply imbued with the desire to do something to render operations less painful. Simpson’s summer vacations were passed at Bathgate, natural history and antiquarian pursuits occupying his spare time. In January 1830, just before he was going up for his license to practise, his father died after some weeks’ illness, during which James constantly watched at his bedside. Such an interruption to study at a critical moment might have upset so sensitive a mind. But Simpson went in for his examination in April, and became a member of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons before he was nineteen years of age. His brother Alexander, who, with the rest of the family, furnished faithful and persevering help to the young brother of whom so much was expected, gave him a home while he looked out for some post to occupy him while waiting for his Edinburgh degree, which his youth prevented him from taking as yet. One of the situations which he sought was that of parish surgeon in a little village named Inverkip, on the Clyde. “When not selected,” he writes long after, “I felt perhaps a deeper amount of chagrin and disappointment than I have ever experienced since that date. If chosen, I would probably have been working there as a village doctor still.”
In 1831 Simpson returned to his university studies, his brother David having commenced business in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, and being able to accommodate the young doctor. He assisted in maintaining himself by becoming assistant to Dr. Gairdner. Thus he was enabled to complete his university course and take his M.D. degree in 1832, giving as his inaugural thesis an essay on “Death from Inflammation.” This attracted much attention, especially from Dr. John Thomson, Professor of Pathology, who at once requested him to act as his assistant with a salary of £50, which the young man made sufficient for all his necessities. In this capacity he prepared a catalogue of the museum of the pathological department. His first experience of obstetric study in attending Professor Hamilton’s lectures had not left his mind under a compulsion to pursue the subject deeply, but Dr. Thomson saw that his assistant, soft-mannered but full of decisive activity, was the very man to succeed in midwifery practice, and he therefore advised him to devote himself specially to it. Another great characteristic was his power of winning the confidence of others, and especially of getting his patients to tell him what it was most important that he should know. But he went immediately to work to become learned in his subject, and then to turn over in his mind everything that he had learnt, until it assumed a new aspect. He always sought new and better ways, and if any department of practice or theory appeared to him defective, he restlessly applied his mind to invent or imagine some improvement. And he had an absorbing desire to gratify his family by achieving success. When his sister Mary told him in 1834 he was injuring his health by overwork, he replied, seriously, “Well, I am sure it’s just to please you all.”