CHAPTER VI
The Discovery of Anæsthetics. 1844-1847
His early sympathy for suffering—Surgical methods before the discovery of anæsthetics—His mental struggle caused by the sickening sights of the operating theatre—His researches into the history of anæsthesia—Indian hemp—Mandrake—Alcohol—Hypnotism and other methods—Inhalation of drugs—Sir Humphry Davy—Anæsthetics discovered in America—Horace Wells and laughing-gas—Morton and ether—Ether in Great Britain—He uses it in midwifery practice—Search for a better-anæsthetic—Discovery of anæsthetic power of chloroform.
From his earliest student days the desire had ever been present in Simpson’s mind to see some means devised for preventing the sufferings endured by patients on the operating table, without, as he put it, “interfering with the free and healthy play of the natural functions.” It is difficult for us at the close of the nineteenth century to understand, without an effort of the imagination, the strong incentives which he had for such a wish. Even to-day, when operations are conducted without the infliction of pain, young students are not unfrequently overcome by the sight and the thought of what is in front of 89 them. At the commencement of a winter session the theatre is crowded with those students who are entering upon surgical study, and with others, not so far advanced, who have come to get a preliminary peep at the practice of this fascinatingly interesting art. Many of these at first succumb and faint even before the surgeon has begun his work, and sometimes are only persuaded to pursue their studies by the encouragement of kindly teachers.
Simpson also went through this trying experience, but it must have been a greater struggle to him to persist. The surroundings of the surgeon at the commencement of the century were vastly more repugnant to a youth of sensitive nature than to-day. The operating theatre then has been compared to a butcher’s shambles; cleanliness was not considered necessary, and little attention was paid to the feelings of the patient. He was held down by three or four pairs of powerful arms as the surgeon boldly and rapidly did his work, despite the screams, stopping, perhaps, only to roughly abuse the patient for some agonised movement which had interfered with the course of action. The poor wretch saw the instruments handed one by one by the assistant, and heard the surgeon’s calm directions and his remarks on the case. The barbarous practice of arresting bleeding by the application of red-hot irons to the surface of the wound had indeed ceased three centuries before, when that humane reformer, Paré, 90 displaced it with the method of tying the open blood-vessel, but the patient’s blood gushed forth before him until arrested, into the sawdust spread to receive it, and the sight and the hot odour of it oftentimes mercifully caused him to faint. The spirit of Paré who, when relating a successful operation, would humbly add at the end, “I dressed him; God healed him,” had not descended to those who practised in Simpson’s day the art for which Paré did so much. It had grown to be necessary for a surgeon to be rough and callous; it was expected of him by the public; he was a man to be pointed at in the street, and shuddered at when he passed, by all who devoutly prayed they might escape his clutches. Much of this conduct was mere mannerism; it had become the custom, and had to be maintained in order to preserve the dignity and stamp the identity of the surgeon. Much of it arose from the haste with which the surgeon had to work; the quicker the operation the better chance had the patient; it was no uncommon thing to see a bystander timing the surgeon’s work, as the professional time-keeper carefully times a race; and the rapidity of each surgeon’s performances was a subject of comparison and admiration amongst the students of his day. Much of it also arose from the effect of the hideous scenes in the operating room upon the surgeon himself; his nerve had to become of iron if he desired to succeed, and with the nerve the face and the manner, but not necessarily always the heart hardened 91 also. Tennyson possibly recollected these days, when he wrote of the surgeon who
“Sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at the door,
Fresh from the surgery schools of France, and of other lands;
Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands.”
When Simpson first saw Liston raise his knife to operate on a poor Highland woman, he actually felt so repelled that he contemplated abandoning his studies, and made a serious attempt to enter upon legal work instead. But the mental struggle with which medical men of all countries, and in all times, can sympathise out of their own knowledge, ended in a victory for medicine, and a triumphant return to his studies with the question permanently engraved on the tablets of his mind, “Can nothing be done to prevent this suffering?”