Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre. Simpson knew how to wait; he knew that waiting did not mean inactivity. Every opportunity that arose for advancement found him prepared to take full advantage of it.
That his lectures on pathology were acceptable was made manifest by the address presented to him by the students of the class at the end of his temporary term of office, testifying to his zeal, fidelity, and success, their admiration of his high talents, of the varied and extensive research which he displayed, and of his uniform and kind affability which, while it exalted him in the eyes of all as a teacher, endeared him to each as a friend.
During this period he kept up a correspondence with the Miss Grindlay, of Liverpool, whose appearance he had been struck with when he visited the family, and towards the end of 1837 he found time to visit there again accompanied by Dr. John Reid.
The way for his appearance as an extra-academical lecturer on midwifery was made clear at the end of 1837 by the death of Dr. Macintosh, a successful teacher of that subject. He had been in negotiation, without success, with this Dr. Macintosh for the taking over of the part or whole of his lectures, and found it easy to step at once into his place at his death. He was firmly determined to succeed ultimately to the University Chair of Midwifery. On one occasion 56 he pointed out to some friends the then holder of the Chair, Professor Hamilton, thus:—“Do you see that old gentleman? Well, that’s my gown!”
The good luck which had been his during his boyhood did not desert him when he began his course of lectures; for not only did he speedily attain a reputation for teaching, science, and practical skill, wonderful for one so young, but he had not two years to wait after thus establishing himself before the chair of his ambition fell vacant owing to the resignation in 1839 of Professor Hamilton, who died soon afterwards at the age of seventy-two.
It was a bold step for so young a man—for Simpson was only twenty-eight—to apply for the professorship. He was, however, not without his precedent. The second Monro obtained the Anatomy Chair at twenty-five, Alison filled that of Physic at thirty, and Thomas Hope and Alexander Christison were Professors of Chemistry and Medical Jurisprudence respectively each at the age of twenty-four. But this subject was one which was popularly thought to require a man of experience and especially a married man. Simpson had devoted his energies but partially to midwifery for only four or five years, and except for his short hospital appointment and recent experience as a lecturer on the subject had in the eyes of many no greater claim to the post than any other general practitioner, except in the fact that he had obtained a wide reputation in the science of the subject by his 57 contribution to its literature and his researches. This last was the point on which he himself most relied; for his age he had done more scientifically than any of his opponents. Those who had watched his career knew that he possessed in addition to zeal and ability, brilliant teaching and practical powers. The objection of his youth was less easily got over than that of his unmarried state. With characteristic promptness, as soon as he had determined to apply for the Chair and found that as a bachelor his chances would be small, he disappeared for a time from Edinburgh, and returned triumphantly with Miss Jessie Grindlay, of Liverpool, as his wife. It was a bold stroke which delighted his supporters, discomfited his opponents, who saw therein the removal of a barrier to his success and a weapon from their hands, and astonished the worthy town councillors in whose gift the appointment lay.
The Edinburgh Chair of Midwifery was established in 1726, and was indisputably the first Chair of its kind in the British Islands, and probably in the world. It was in that year that the Town Council first established the medical faculty, by appointing two Professors of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and two of Medicine and Chemistry. A Chair of Anatomy had been instituted six years earlier through the instrumentality of the first Monro who became its first occupant. These five chairs were considered sufficient wherewith to teach all the medical knowledge 58 of the day, and although appointed ad vitam aut culpam the professors received no remuneration out of the city revenues. The Chair was not reckoned at first as a faculty Chair, but was termed a city professorship. The newly created medical faculty would have no midwifery within the precincts of the University; and this is scarcely surprising when we remember that at first the only persons lectured to by the city professor were women of an inferior class in whose hands the practice of the art almost entirely lay.
Along with this appointment the Town Council established a system of regulation for midwifery practice within the city. It ordered that all midwives already in practice should at once be registered, and that no persons should thereafter enter on the practice within the city until they had presented to the magistrate a certificate under the hands of at least one doctor and one surgeon who were at the same time members of the College of Physicians or of the Incorporation of Chirurgeons, bearing that they had so much of the knowledge and principles of this art as warranted their entering on the practice of it; whereupon a licence should be given them signed by four magistrates at least entitling them to practise. It was further enacted that certain pains and penalties were to be inflicted upon ignorant persons for practising without this licence whereby their “want of skill might be of such dangerous consequences to the lives 59 of so many people.” It is to be presumed that as qualified medical men granted them these certificates and that these women had extensive practices, they possessed also a fair amount of skill. But slowly and gradually they had to give way and retire to the rank of nurses before the rise and growing public tolerance of the qualified male practitioner of obstetrics.
The second occupant of the chair, appointed in 1739, was elevated to a place in the medical faculty, but Professor Thomas Young, who occupied it in 1756, was the first to teach the subject to medical students by means of lectures and clinical instruction. As already noted, it was left for James Hamilton to obtain the recognition of midwifery as a subject, a knowledge of which was necessary for the obtaining of the University medical degree.
At the time when Simpson was straining every nerve to gain the post he coveted, the medical faculty of the University comprised the following professors of the following subjects:—Botany, Robert Graham, who established the Edinburgh and Glasgow Botanical Gardens; Anatomy, Monro the third; Chemistry, Hope, who discovered strontium in the lead mines of Argyleshire; Institutes of Medicine, Alison, an eminent physician and philanthropist who first pointed out the connection between destitution and epidemics of disease, and secured improved Poor Laws for his country; Practice of Physic, James Home; Materia Medica, Christison, the world-reputed toxicologist; 60 Natural History, Robert Jameson; Clinical Surgery, James Syme, the wonderful operator and teacher, and inventor of the “macintosh” waterproof; Military Surgery, Ballingall; Medical Jurisprudence, Traill; Pathology, Thomson; and Surgery, Charles Bell, the discoverer of the double function of the nerves, who was ranked in his day on the Continent as greater than Harvey. It was thus not an undistinguished body that Simpson strove to enter; several of the best-known members were comparatively young men, recently appointed to their posts, and full of the rising scientific spirit. It is little to their credit that they were practically unanimous in opposing the candidature of this young and enthusiastic scientist, who afterwards shed such lustre on the University from the chair which they would have denied him for no reasons other than his youth and his humble origin.