The lady was Miss Petrie, a niece of Mrs. Simpson’s; she folded her arms across her breast as she inhaled the vapour, and fell asleep crying, “I’m an angel! Oh, I’m an angel”! The party sat discussing their sensations, and the merits of the substance long after it was finished; they were unanimous in considering that at last something had been found to surpass ether.
The following morning a manufacturing chemist was pressed into service, and had to burn the midnight oil to meet Simpson’s demand for the new substance. So great was Simpson’s midwifery practice that he was able to make immediate trial of chloroform, and on November 10th he read a paper to the Medico-Chirurgical Society, describing the nature of his agent, and narrating cases in which he had already successfully used it. “I have never had the pleasure,” he said, “of watching over a series of better and more rapid recoveries; nor once witnessed any disagreeable results follow to either mother or child; whilst I have now seen an immense amount of maternal pain and agony saved by its employment. And I most conscientiously believe that the proud mission of the physician is distinctly twofold—namely to alleviate human suffering as well as preserve human life.” In a postscript to the same paper he states on November 15th that he had already administered 109 chloroform to about fifty individuals without the slightest bad result, and gives an account of the first surgical cases in which he gave the agent to patients of his friends, Professor Miller and Dr. Duncan, in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. “A great collection,” he says, “of professional gentlemen and students witnessed the results, and amongst them Professor Dumas, of Paris, the chemist who first ascertained and established the chemical composition of chloroform. He happened to be passing through Edinburgh, and was in no small degree rejoiced to witness the wonderful physiological effects of a substance with whose chemical history his own name was so intimately connected.” Four thousand copies of this paper were sold in a few days, and many thousands afterwards.
It is worthy of mention that, according to a promise, Professor Miller had sent for Simpson a few days after the discovery to give chloroform to a patient on whom he was about to perform a major operation; Simpson, however, was unavoidably prevented from attending, and Miller began the operation without him—at the first cut of the knife the patient fainted and died. It is easy to imagine what a blow to Simpson, and to the cause of anæsthesia this would have been had it happened while the patient was under chloroform.
Thus in little more than a year from the date of Morton’s discovery of the powers of ether, Simpson had crowned the achievement by the discovery of the 110 equally wonderful and beneficial powers of chloroform. Already he had made two satisfactory answers to the question he had early set himself—first, the application of anæsthesia to midwifery practice; and, second, the discovery of the properties of the more portable and manageable chloroform; the third, and perhaps the greatest, the defence of the practice, and the beating down of the powerful opposition to anæsthesia was yet required to render his reply complete.
CHAPTER VII
The Fight for Anæsthesia. 1847 onwards
His faith in chloroform—Confused public opinion on the subject—Personal attacks—Opposition on professional grounds—His reply—Opposition on moral grounds—His reply—Opposition on religious grounds—His reply—Her Majesty the Queen anæsthetised—Indiscrete supporters—The Edinburgh teaching of anæsthesia administration—The far-reaching effects of the successful introduction of anæsthesia.
Professor Simpson firmly believed that he possessed now in chloroform an anæsthetic agent “more portable, more manageable and powerful, more agreeable to inhale, and less exciting” than ether, and one giving him “greater control and command over the superinduction of the anæsthetic state.” Fortified by this belief, full of facts relating to the subject, and fired with zeal and enthusiasm, he was prepared to meet the opposition which from his knowledge of human nature he must have anticipated. So bravely and so emphatically did he champion the 112 cause that he became identified with it in the public mind. The revelation of anæsthesia, the discovery of chloroform, and the application of anæsthetics to surgery as well as to midwifery were attributed to him by all classes of the community, not even excepting many of his own profession. Chloroform was spoken of as if ether had never existed; and chloroform and chloroforming displaced the terms anæsthetic and anæsthetising in ordinary talk—such unwieldy terms were naturally abandoned when there was the excuse that chloroform was universally considered the best substance of its class. Simpson made no attempt as Morton had done to patent his discovery under a fanciful name for his own pecuniary profit; but widely spread abroad every particle of knowledge concerning it that he possessed, so that every practitioner was forthwith enabled to avail himself thereof for the benefit of his patients.
Partly owing to his own enthusiasm and his strong belief in the superiority of chloroform over ether, and partly owing to the confusion prevailing in general circles as to the history of anæsthesia, no small number of attacks were directed against Simpson personally by those who either were jealous of his achievements, or who considered that the part taken by themselves or their friends in the establishment of this new era in medical science had been slighted or overlooked. Simpson took all these as part of the fight into which he had entered. His nature was not sensitive to 113 such personal attacks; he replied to them, cast them off, and went on his way unaffected. He handled some of these opponents somewhat severely when they accused him of encouraging the public belief in him as the discoverer of anæsthesia. It is clear to us to-day after anæsthesia has been on its trial for fifty years that Simpson magnified the superiority of chloroform over ether, and was led by that feeling to look on the history of ether as but a stage in the history of the greater chloroform. He regarded chloroform as the only anæsthetic; his utterances betrayed this feeling, and offence was naturally taken by the introducers and advocates of ether. His opinion of chloroform was shared by the leading European surgeons to such an extent in his day that shortly after his death Professor Gusserow, of Berlin, stated that with a few exceptions almost all over the earth nothing else was used to produce anæsthesia but chloroform.