Sometimes as a special favour he was taken by Reid to hear one of the lectures of the notorious Robert Knox, the extra-academical teacher of anatomy, whose strong personality and unrivalled powers as a lecturer were at that time attracting to Surgeon’s Square hundreds of students, while Munro (Tertius) was mechanically repeating his grandfather’s lectures from the University chair.
It was towards the end of 1828, when Simpson was just about commencing his medical studies that Edinburgh, and in fact the whole of civilised Europe, was horrified by the revelation of the doings of Burke and Hare, when they were at last brought to justice for the long series of crimes perpetrated for the purpose of selling the bodies of their victims to the anatomical schools. Knox having a class of some four hundred students had special difficulty in meeting the demand for “subjects,” and it was brought to light at the trial of Burke that the majority of the bodies were disposed of to Knox. As was only natural, a fierce indignation against Knox sprang up in the city. His residence was assailed and his effigy burnt. His life was in danger at the hands of the mob on more than one occasion.
Lord Cockburn in his “Memorials of His Time” says that all the Edinburgh anatomists incurred an unjust and very alarming though not an unnatural odium—Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace but the condemnation 24 of more intelligent persons was directed. “But,” he says, “tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the profession our anatomists were spotlessly correct and Knox the most correct of them all.”
These were stirring times in Edinburgh medical circles. The strong, cool demeanour of Knox under the persecutions to which he was subjected, must have made an indelible impression on Simpson’s mind, and the memory of it may have served to strengthen him in later years when himself subjected to the unjust accusations of thoughtless and ignorant people.
One night when Knox had attracted a large class to hear him on a favourite subject, the crowd in the street mustered in unusual force; the yells and howls from outside were heard distinctly in the class-room. The students got alarmed, and kept looking to the doors of egress. Knox perceiving the restlessness and alarm of his audience paused, and then addressed to them reassuring words, expressing his contempt for the cowardly mob, and reminding them of the great men who at different times had suffered persecution for the cause of their science. His statement was received with such cheers as resounded beyond the class-room walls and actually cowed the uproarious mob, so loudly did the students applaud the words of the man who, they knew, daily placed his life in danger in order to lecture to them, and whose last hour seemed to have come, so great 25 and threatening was the crowd on this particular evening.
If Simpson did not actually witness such a scene as the foregoing—he was not a member of Knox’s class until the session 1830-31—he must at least have known full well about it at the time, and shared with the whole body of students the worship of the man as a hero. His fellow lodger, Reid, was not only a distinguished pupil in Knox’s class, but became one of Knox’s demonstrators in 1833, and was always a prominent Knoxite. We know also that Knox went down to Bathgate to visit Reid’s relations there, so that it is justifiable to conclude that Simpson came closely in contact with this remarkable teacher. That the relationship between Reid and Simpson was most intimate we have the former’s own words for. At a public dinner given to him when appointed to his professorship in 1841, he said, “In the croupier (Simpson) I recognise my earliest friend, a native of the same village. We were rivals at school and at college. We stood to each other from boyhood upwards in every possible relation, whether of an educational, warlike, delicate, or social character, which the warm and fitful feelings peculiar to boyhood and youth can produce.”
In the end Knox and Reid quarrelled over a scientific matter. Knox never recovered from the effect of the Burke and Hare incident; in spite of the favourable report of an influential committee appointed to 26 inquire into his share in the proceedings, and his own explicit statements, the public never acquitted him of at least a wilful shutting of his eyes to much that ought to have aroused his suspicions. His crowded class-room gradually became empty during the next few years, and the once brilliant, talented, and determined man became demoralised and left Edinburgh. Christison says that Knox finally died almost destitute in London, and that one of his last occupations was that of showman to a party of travelling Ojibbeway Indians.
However the strong personality and attractive lecturing of Knox may have influenced him, it is undoubted that to the personal influence of MacArthur and Reid, acting upon his constant hunger to know nature and truth, stimulated as it was by what he saw of anatomy and physiology, we owe the fact that Simpson decided to enter the medical profession.
Although the number of medical students in Edinburgh University reached one of its highest points during the years that Simpson was a student, it is remarkable that with one, or perhaps two, exceptions, the University professors were men of no marked eminence in their various subjects. On the other hand, the extra-mural teachers included men of such wide reputation as Knox, Lizars, and Liston. Syme, who reached the height of his fame as a surgeon about the same time that Simpson became renowned, had just resigned the teaching of anatomy to take up 27 surgery; shut out at first from the wards of the Royal Infirmary by jealous colleagues, he was boldly establishing for himself the little Minto House Hospital, which became the successful nursery of his own unsurpassed system of clinical teaching, and remains in the recollection to this day as the principal scene of Dr. John Brown’s pathetic story, “Rab and his Friends.” It was chiefly these extra-academical teachers who at that time made the medical school famous, and were raising for it a reputation in surgery such as it had acquired in physic in the days of Cullen. In certain subjects the students would, according to the regulations for the degree, take out their tickets of attendance on the professor’s course of lectures, but would put in only a sufficient number of appearances to entitle them to the necessary certificates; the real study of the subject being made under the more accomplished teacher outside the University walls.