There is reason to believe that Simpson perceived much insincerity in the revival movement, and attempted to dissociate himself from active participation in it, on account of finding it impossible to work in harmony with some who, though loud in profession, flagrantly failed in practice.
The subject of Simpson’s health has been little referred to in these pages, because throughout his life he paid little attention to it. The chief remedy for the feeling of indisposition was change of work. He found it impossible to be idle, and sought as recreation occupations such as archæological research, or a scamper round foreign hospitals, which to most people would have savoured more of labour. The part of his body which was most worked, his nervous system, was naturally the one which most often troubled him with disorder; like other great men of high mental development he suffered from time to time with severe attacks of megrim, which necessitated a few hours of rest. The blood-poisoning, for which he availed himself 211 of Professor Syme’s services, was soon recovered from with prompt treatment ending in a foreign tour; but after it little illnesses became more frequent, and he was perforce occasionally confined to the house. During these times he busied himself, for the sake of occupation and to distract his attention from his sufferings, in professional reading or the preparation of literary papers. Rheumatic troubles became frequent, and soon after his eldest son’s death he had to run over to the Isle of Man to free himself from a severe attack of sciatica.
Long, weary nights spent at the bedside of patients or in tiresome railway journeys, and exposure to all varieties of weather, had a serious effect upon him. Travelling was slow, according to modern ideas, and long waits at wayside stations in winter-time helped to play havoc with his constitution. He was well known to the railway officials in Scotland. The figure of the great Edinburgh professor was familiar at many a station, striding up and down the platform with the stationmaster, chaffing the porter, or cheerily chatting to the driver and stoker leaning out of the engine. After his death many of these men would proudly produce little mementoes of their services to him, which he never forgot to send.
The little rest house, Viewbank, on the Forth, had to be more frequently sought refuge in, if only to get away from the harassing night-bell and secure a full night’s sleep. In the last year or two of his existence 212 he found the work of his practice and chair hard to carry on, not because of any defined illness, but on account of the loss of that buoyant elasticity of constitution which had enabled him to bear without apparent effort or injury the fatigue which would have been sufficient to prostrate more than one ordinary man. He had early trained himself to do with a minimum of sleep; to snatch what he could and when he could, if it were only on a sofa, a bare board, or in one of the comfortless railway carriages of the day. He took full advantage during his career of the modern facilities for travelling which he had seen introduced and developed. Many a night was spent in the train, going to or returning from a far-distant patient, or after a combined professional and archæological excursion; the next morning would find him busy in his usual routine. On the day after receiving the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford in 1866, he started for Devizes, which was reached the same evening; here he had a hasty meal and drove on to Avebury to see the standing stones there. He returned at midnight, and at five o’clock next morning set off for Stonehenge, a place he had long desired to see, thoroughly examined the remarkable remains, and on his return took train to Bath, where he found time to examine more antiquities. At midnight a telegram reached him calling him professionally to Northumberland. He snatched a few hours’ sleep, and taking the four a.m. train to London set out for Northumberland, where he saw his patient, 213 and then proceeded to Edinburgh. This is no solitary instance of his journeyings, but an example of many.
When the year 1870 had been entered upon, he awoke to the fact that his flesh was too weak for his eager spirit; despite this, he held on his course, and worked without ceasing, never refusing an urgent call, although he now suffered from angina pectoris. On February 12th he hastened to London to give evidence in a notorious divorce case. He arrived only to find that the trial had been postponed for four days. He returned to Edinburgh on the 14th, spent the next day in professional visits in the country, and arrived again in London in time to appear in the witness-box on the 16th, although chilled to the bone by the coldness of the long journey. On the following day he stopped at York on his way home, dined with Lord Houghton, and visited, at 11 p.m., his friend Dr. Williams, in Micklegate. During the remainder of the journey from York to Edinburgh he suffered severely, and “was glad to rest for awhile upon the floor of the railway carriage.”
A few days after this last run to London he was summoned to see a patient in Perth, but was this time so fatigued by the effort, that after his return on February 25th he was obliged to take to bed. The news sped to all quarters of the globe that Simpson was gravely ill, for nothing but grave illness could compel that vigorous man to completely lay down his work.
His symptoms improved at first under appropriate 214 treatment sufficiently to allow him to be placed on a bed in the drawing-room; and he even once more took up his favourite archæology, revising some of his work in that subject. Patients also were not to be denied; many were seen and prescribed for in his sick room, some even being carried up to his presence. But the fatal disease regained ascendancy, and the fact became apparent to all, not excepting himself, that the last chapter of the closely written book of his life had been entered upon. Towards the end of March, by his own request, his eldest surviving son was telegraphed for to be near him, and he wrote a touching letter to his youngest son, then a student in Geneva, encouraging him in his studies, asking him to look for cup-markings cut in the curious islet rock in Lake Geneva, and ending with an expression of his feeling of impending death, for which he felt perfectly and happily prepared. In these last days he loved to have his nearest and dearest around him; Lady Simpson and others read to him, and his daughter tells us how she daily prepared her school lessons in the sick room with his help; to the last he interested himself in the work of his relations and friends. He answered the attack of Bigelow, of Boston, conscious that it was his last effort on behalf of chloroform, and wrote to all his old opponents asking their forgiveness if at any time words of his had wounded their feelings. He might well have spared himself the regrets—such as they were—which troubled him. “I would have 215 liked to have completed hospitalism,” he said, “but I hope some good man will take it up.” On another occasion he asked, “How old am I? Fifty-nine? Well, I have done some work. I wish I had been busier.”
He expressed a desire that his nephew should succeed him in the Chair of Midwifery—he would, he thought, help to perpetuate his treatment.
There was much communing with himself on his future, and all his sayings on the subject breathed the simple faith first inculcated in him in the Bathgate cottage. His great sufferings, sometimes allayed by opiates and his own chloroform, were bravely borne, but the days dragged sadly on. On the evening of May 5th Sandy took his place at his side, and the last conscious moments of the great physician were spent with his head in the arms of him who had helped and guided him through the difficult days of his career. At sunset on May 6th he passed peacefully away.
The extent of the feeling evoked by the tidings of his death was represented in Mr. Gladstone’s remark that it was a grievous loss to the nation and was truly a national concern. There was a universally expressed opinion that he merited without a shadow of doubt the rare national honour of public interment in Westminster Abbey. A committee was formed out of the leading medical men in London to carry out this suggestion. Their task was light, for the Dean acceded to the request at once. Much as his 216 family and the Scots people valued this tribute to his greatness, they decided otherwise. Scotland has no counterpart of Westminster in which to lay to rest those whom she feels to have been her greatest; but Edinburgh felt that she could not part with him who in life had been her possession and her pride. He had long ago chosen a piece of ground in the Warriston cemetery, and Lady Simpson decided, to the gratification of his fellow-citizens, that he should be buried there beside the five children who had preceded him. His resting place was well chosen; it nestled into the side of the beautiful city, and from it could be viewed some of the chief objects of the scene he knew so well—on the south the stately rock crowned with the ancient castle, and the towering flats of the old town stretching away to Arthur’s Seat; on the north the long stretch of the Firth of Forth and in the distance on the one hand the Ochills; on the other the Bass Rock.