No stranger to Edinburgh omitted to bring or 82 obtain an introduction to the genial professor; all were welcome, and an open table was kept. The scene has been described from intimate knowledge in the columns of the Scots Observer as follows:—“Luncheon is set on the table, and some ten, twenty, or even fifty people wait the appearance of their host, who is on his rounds maybe, or in another room ministers to an urgent case. A stranger who has not learnt that the great Simpson was only in the broadest sense a punctual man—of minutes, hours, he knew nothing, but none more reliably punctual, few so unsparingly regular in working while ’tis called to-day—might be prompted by hungry discontent to suggest that none but the wealthiest can keep the doctor from his guests. The mere suggestion would be infamous, for rich and ragged alike pay fees or not exactly as it pleases them. Whatever the cause, the host still lingers, and the impatient stranger has time to wonder how it is that so odd an assortment of human beings should be met together in one room. Lords and Commons rub shoulders at his table; the salt of the earth sit down side by side with the savourless; tweed jostles broadcloth; the town-bred Briton looks askance at his country-bred compatriot, and both unconsciously shudder at the Briton with no breeding at all. In one room are assembled together the American of bluest blood; the Yankee bagman; the slave-owning Southerner, and even the man of colour hateful to both alike. The atmosphere is chill like the grave, each 83 guest, eyeing his neighbour suspiciously, shrinks into his own social shell; on each face the meanness and snobbery of humankind is, if not aggressively expressed, at least clearly legible; when all at once Simpson bustles in. In a few minutes, under the genial influence of his presence, all tongues are set a-wagging, and well may you ask whether the men who leave his house after luncheon are those who half-an-hour ago regarded each other with cold disdain. For now they are cordial, kindly, sympathetic; each has been induced to show whatever was attractive in his nature, or to give the fruits of his experience. If in one short hour Simpson could thus transform a crowd of frigid, haughty strangers into an assemblage of decent, amiable human beings, what could he not achieve in a day, a year, or a life?”
His reception of members of his own profession was specially cordial, and if those from any one country were more welcome than others, it was the many who crossed the Atlantic to see and hear him. America had the greatest share in the birth of anæsthetics, and Simpson’s intimacy with so many of the profession in the United States made it easy for them to welcome his assistance in that great event. Gynæcology, too, was eagerly taken up in America, and many were Simpson’s admirers from that country who returned home fired by his influence to work out for themselves valuable additions to that science.
Simpson paid close attention to current events in 84 other branches of science, in politics, and in religion. Sir Robert Christison and he were at one time associated in an enterprise which narrowly escaped being the source of a fortune to him. Rangoon petroleum which was obtained from pits dug on the banks of the Irawaddy had been chemically investigated by Christison, and he had isolated from it a substance which he named petroline; unfortunately, unknown to him, a German chemist had independently made the same discovery a few months earlier, and christened the substance paraffin. When, a few years later, it occurred to Simpson that the crude Rangoon petroleum might serve as a lubricant for machinery and prove cheaper than those in general use, he applied to Christison. He met with willing assistance, but a refusal on principle to have anything to do with a patent, which Christison laughingly suggested, might be called “Simpson’s incomparable antifriction lubricant!”
“When I called for Simpson,” says Christison, in his Recollections, “his two reception rooms were as usual full of patients, more were seated in the lobby, female faces stared from all the windows in vacant expectancy, and a lady was ringing the door bell. But the doctor brushed through the crowd to join me, and left them all kicking their heels for the next two hours.”
Their experiments proved that petroleum was vastly superior to sperm oil, the best known and most commonly 85 used lubricant. Simpson proceeded to take out a patent, having no such scruples as Christison; but to his chagrin found that he had been forestalled by others, and had to abandon the subject.
About the period now referred to Scotland was stirred from end to end by the ecclesiastical movement which culminated in the crisis known as the Disruption, when, for reasons connected with the jurisdiction of the National Church, a majority of its members severed their connection therewith in a public and dramatic fashion, and “came out” to found the now strong and vigorous Free Kirk. Simpson at first steered clear of all the squabbles and discussions which the movement gave rise to, but when affairs approached a crisis he threw his lot in with the leaders of the new movement, and became a staunch Free Churchman.
Busy as he was, Simpson fully enjoyed his home and all the inner domestic life. He was a cheery and hearty host to his intimate friends, and took a pleasure in impromptu entertainments got up by himself in his own house, when he found time at his disposal for such amusement. His first child—a daughter—of whom he was mightily proud, was born in 1840; his first son, David, in 1842; and the second, Walter, in 1843. In 1844 the young couple, in the midst of their rising prosperity, suffered the loss of their daughter, who died after a brief illness. Simpson felt the loss keenly, and wrote pathetically on the subject to his 86 relations; long afterwards he loved to talk of her and her winning ways.
By 1846 the vast majority of his work lay in obstetrics and gynæcology, although he himself would no doubt have indignantly repelled the suggestion that he was a specialist; his mind recognised the interdependence of all the great branches of the healing art, and the necessity for any who wished to excel or be useful practitioners to be au courant with each and every branch. He had early shown that as a pathologist alone he was worthy of a niche in the temple of fame; and in later days he was urged to apply for the vacant chair of Physic in his own University; while Professor A. R. Simpson tells us that foreigners working in the sphere of surgery sometimes spoke of him as a surgeon.
Early in 1847 his good friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, wrote to inform him that the Queen had much pleasure in conferring upon him the vacant post of Physician to Her Majesty. In the Queen’s own words, “His high character and abilities made him very fit for the post.” He held this post until his death, under the title of Physician Accoucheur to the Queen for Scotland.
Thus in his thirty-sixth year, to the pride of his family and of the whole village community in which he had been born and received his early training, to the admiration of patients and friends, as well as to his own conscious satisfaction, the Bathgate baker’s 87 son had risen by his own efforts to the highest attainable position in his native land. But the work which was to make him one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of medicine, and raise him to a place of honour in the grateful estimation of humanity, was scarcely begun.