It was impossible that a man holding Simpson’s position, engaged in his work, and possessed of distinct fighting characteristics, should not make enemies. He could say, as Jenner said before him, “As for fame, what is it? A gilded butt for ever pierced by the arrows of malignancy. The name of John Hunter stamps this observation with the signature of truth.”
The arrows of malignancy did not hurt Simpson. He was very little, if at all, affected by them; but he paid, perhaps, more attention to them than we might have expected him to pay; certainly more than they deserved. His love of the fray led him oftentimes to answer what had better have been left unnoticed, and dragged him into prolonged, sometimes bitter, and, it is to be regretted, often unworthy, controversies. There was so much valuable work to be done, and his efforts were always so fruitful in result that we grudge the time spent in these squabbles; there arises an instinctive feeling that had he devoted the energy wasted in these contests to furthering some single branch of science, he would have made distinct 146 advances therein. There was nothing superficial about his work; whatever the object it was thoroughly entered into; his writings convey to one a sense of the power he had of seeing all round and through a question, and of weighing and judging evidence. There was likewise no scamping in his mode of treating his opponents in these squabbles; he used his weapons fearlessly and administered many a trouncing to weak opponents.
It was a time of upheaval in things medical. The microscope and stethoscope had been introduced into the science and practice of the healing art. Scientific experiment and research were beginning to lay the foundations of rational medicine and surgery. Edinburgh was in the front rank of modern progress, as she has ever been. Men like Simpson, Syme, Miller, Alison, and Christison, were not likely to lag behind. But, unfortunately, it was equally unlikely that such great minds could all think alike in matters concerning the principles of the science and art which they taught and practised. Thus it happened that the Edinburgh School became notorious for its internal quarrels, and in these Simpson was, as a rule, to be found busy.
Quite apart from these professional differences were the disputes arising from attacks made upon Simpson by professional brethren and laymen, who accused him of wrong treatment or neglect of patients. His fame endowed him with almost superhuman powers 147 in the minds of patients and their friends. When all other means had failed Simpson was hastened to as a last but sure resource; bitter the disappointment, bitter was the grief, and also sometimes bitter the things said of him when the anxious friends of a sufferer found that even Simpson’s powers of healing were limited. These attacks were some of the “arrows of malignancy,” which naturally fell about the over-busy man. He thought it necessary to stop, pick up these arrows, and challenge the assailants; we may regret that he stooped so often to this action, but we feel that it sprang as much from the love of truth and justice as from the dictates of a disposition inclined towards quarrel.
It is impossible to pass over the great controversy which raged in Edinburgh about 1850 on the merits of homœopathy, in which Simpson, of course, took a leading part. About the beginning of the century the practice of medicine by the apothecaries, as the general practitioners were then called, consisted in the most unscientific, nay, haphazard administration of drugs in large quantities and combinations. It was an age of drugging doctors, and the custom had become so thoroughly established that it is doubtful whether any less completely opposite system than that introduced by Hahnemann would have convinced the public that after all so many drugs were not required, nor such large quantities of them. Homœopathic practice was founded on facts improperly interpreted, 148 and laid down for general use a procedure that was applicable in only a limited number of cases. As Dr. Lauder Brunton has recently pointed out, it is in many instances only a method of faith-cure, and as such has its value. The success which its practitioners certainly obtained in many cases where the ordinary wholesale drugging of the day had proved futile, at once made men pause ere allowing their bodies to be made receptacles for the complicated preparations of the physician. In Edinburgh at this time the influence of homœopathy had been felt. Alison, a physician of great renown, was to the end a pronounced polypharmacist, and was said scarcely ever to leave a patient without a new bottle or prescription. Graham, another university professor, was also a thorough-going old school therapeutist. On the other hand, Syme treated all medicine except rhubarb and soda with disdain; and Henderson, the professor of Pathology, and also a practising physician, after professing to consider no medicine of very much value, became a pronounced sceptic, and finally horrified his colleagues by making trials of homœopathy, and gradually becoming enamoured of it until he confessed himself a full follower of Hahnemann’s doctrines. Christison was leading the school which urged that the action of medicines should be studied experimentally if their administration was to be founded on scientific grounds. The behaviour of Henderson, who so greatly owed his position as professor 149 to Simpson, stirred the wrath of the latter. He examined and condemned the irrational system of Hahnemann, and threw himself into an attitude of strong opposition. Syme and Christison ably seconded him in strong public action. Henderson was obliged to resign his chair owing to “loss of health.” Homœopathy was thoroughly crushed in Edinburgh. The contest between the old system of drugging with large complicated doses of powerful remedies, and the new one of giving on principle infinitesimal doses of the same medicines, served a good purpose. It gave an opportunity for establishing rational therapeutics, a science which is making daily progress, and in the presence of which neither the old system nor homœopathy can stand.
About this same period mesmerism was again coming to the front, this time cloaked as a science termed electro-biology. Simpson acknowledged that there was a great deal in mesmerism demanding scientific investigation; but with his reasoning powers he could not realise the existence of the mystically-termed higher phenomena of animal magnetism, e.g., lucidity, transference of the senses, and, above all, clairvoyance. It happened that a professional mesmerist gave a performance in Edinburgh; learning that the “professor’s” daughter was stated to be able to read anything written on paper, or to divine any object enclosed in a sealed box while under her father’s mesmeric power, Simpson attended the performance. 150 He took with him a specially-prepared test—a sealed box with certain unknown contents; this he presented at a suitable opportunity. Against their own wishes, but on the insistence of the audience, the performers made an attempt by their methods to detect the nature of the contents of this test-box. They pronounced it to be money; on opening it millet seed was found, and a piece of paper, on which was written, “humbug.”
An accusation, couched in bitter terms, that Simpson was really a supporter of mesmerism as it was then known, was published in one of the leading professional journals in London. He indignantly repudiated the suggestion and proposed to settle the matter finally by a simple expedient. He offered to place five sealed boxes each containing a line from Shakspeare written by himself on paper, in the hands of the editor of the journal who had permitted the attack to appear in his columns. To any clairvoyant who read these lines according to the professed method, and to the satisfaction of a committee of eminent medical men, he promised the sum of five hundred pounds. The offer, however, was not accepted.
The brilliant attainments of many of its teachers at this period not only placed the Edinburgh school at the head of the British schools of medicine, but also led to tempting offers being made to individual professors by rival schools anxious to secure their services.
London was a much more lucrative field for practice than the Scots metropolis, and several of the most eminent Edinburgh men had from time to time yielded to the temptation to migrate southwards. Indeed, London as a medical school owes a great deal to the Scotsmen whom she imported. Liston had left for London in 1834, and Syme followed, for a brief period, on Liston’s death. In 1848 a strong effort was made to secure Simpson as a lecturer on midwifery at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; without any hesitation he decided to remain in the city where he had fought his way to fame, and where he enjoyed popularity, and a practice sufficiently lucrative to satisfy the most ambitious man. Every patriotic Scot applauded the decision.