H. Laing Gordon

“ He was stimulated by a genius which, as has been pointed out, gave him the energy to fight for his ends with herculean strength. The fact that chloroform was by his efforts alone accepted as the anæsthetic, and ether, which from the first was generally thought to be safer in ordinary hands, was deliberately put on one side practically all over the world, testified to his forcible and convincing method, and to his power of 222 making others see as he saw. As a man of science alone, as a philanthropist alone, as a worker alone, as a reformer alone, he was great. ”

“ Such was the opposition encountered, and such was the timidity of his professional brethren, that but for Simpson’s courageous efforts it would have been the work of years to bring about what it was granted to him to accomplish in a brief period; if fear, ridicule, contempt, and bigotry had not perhaps sunk the new practice into oblivion. Of the hundreds who are daily mercifully brought under the influence of chloroform and ether, few are aware what they owe to Simpson, even if they know how great is the suffering which they are spared. ”

“ Although no brilliant operator himself, he so transformed the surgical theatre by his revelation of the power of chloroform, and by his powerful advocacy of the use of anæsthetics, that pain was shut out and vast scientific possibilities opened up; many of which have been brilliantly realised by subsequent workers. He devoted himself specially to the despised obstetric art, fighting for what he recognised as the most lowly and neglected branch of his profession, ranging his powerful forces on the side of the weak, and left it the most nearly perfect of medical sciences. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ As a man, Simpson had his faults; but they were exaggerated in his lifetime by some, just as his capabilities and achievements were magnified by 220 those who worshipped him as inspired. He was full of sympathy for mankind, benevolent and honest to a fault, and forbearing to his enemies. He rushed eagerly into the combat and oftentimes wounded sorely, and perhaps unnecessarily. His genius was essentially a reforming genius, and impelled him to fight for his ends, for genius is always the “master of man.” ”

“ Simpson had not long been engaged upon his new duties before the town councillors gladly saw, and his brother professors were obliged to admit, that the baker’s son was bringing a mighty genius to bear upon the subject of his choice from the chair of his ambition. He cherished no ill-feeling against those confrères who had actively opposed his candidature, but set to work amidst his new surroundings conscious that the best way to obliterate bitter feelings was by gradually creating a stronger feeling—that of respect for him as a man and a worker. ”

“ Both as a lecturer and as a bedside teacher he captured his students by the charm of his diction, the wide range of his knowledge, and as Professor Gusserow has pointed out in his masterly memoir, by his peculiar talent of having his knowledge at his fingers’ ends, and that often in very remote details.
Year by year he never failed to obtain the affection of his students; scarcely a man that had been taught by him but would proudly boast that he was his friend as well as his teacher. ”

“ Nothing illustrates better the progress of surgery than a picture of the operating-room in the first decade placed beside that of an operating theatre in one of our leading hospitals in this the last decade of the nineteenth century. In the quiet of the patient, in the painlessness of the 132 operation, in the calm deliberation of the operator, and the methodical order of all around him, in the respectful silence that prevails in the room so soon as the patient is laid on the table, we see the direct results of the introduction of anæsthetics. ”

“ The advances which Simpson made in the science and practice of both midwifery and gynæcology were due to the magnitude of his experience and the readiness of his genius to profit by experience. His one thought being the relief of suffering and the prolongation of life, he approached the bedside as a man with less high aspirations would fail to do. He considered only the patient’s interest, and gave his genius free play. ”

“ This ceremony remains deeply impressed in the memory of Edinburgh men, simple and dull as it undoubtedly is. The homily delivered by the orator of the day contains excellent counsels appropriate to the occasion, but the young man eager to rise and confidently try his wings pays little attention to the words of wisdom; unless it be to feel wonder that just as he is about to leave them, probably for ever, his Alma Mater and her priests have discovered an affectionate regard for him and his welfare. ”

“ Great as was Simpson’s contemporary fame, the chief part of it had its origin in his indescribable personal power over his fellows, and in his inexhaustible energy. When to these was added the reputation won by the discovery of chloroform’s anæsthetic properties, he stood not only as the most famous physician of his day, but also as a man marked out for posthumous fame. The personal characteristics of the man were speedily forgotten after his death, save by those who had been brought under their influence ”

“ If you follow these, the noble objects of your profession, in a proper spirit of love and kindness to your race, the pure light of benevolence will shed around the path of your toils and labours the brightness and beauty that will ever cheer you onwards and keep your steps from being weary in well-doing; ... while if you practise the art that you profess with a cold-hearted view to its results, merely as a matter of lucre and trade, your course will be as dark and miserable as that low and grovelling love that dictates it. ”

“ On one occasion an old beggar woman, who plied her calling in quite an original method—that of being wheeled in a barrow from farm to farm—hurled curses at old Simpson for ordering a servant to wheel her from his house on to her next calling-place, and vowed an awful vengeance on his family if he did not replace the servant with one of his stalwart sons. ”

“ Boldly and heroically he made the necessary experiment upon himself, and on September 30, 1846, inhaled ether from a handkerchief while shut up in his room and seated in his own operating-chair. He speedily lost consciousness, and in seven or eight minutes awoke in possession of the greatest discovery that had ever been revealed to suffering humanity. We can picture the man gradually awakening in his chair first, to the consciousness of his surroundings and then to the consciousness of his great achievement ”

“ But even while Simpson was growing out of childhood all the powers of such professional giants as Bright, Addison, Abernethy, Astley Cooper, and Charles Bell, were insufficient to dispel the massive cloud of mystery and superstition which enveloped the practice of both medicine and surgery in this country and obscured whatever there was of truth in the teaching of these men. ”

“ The University was crowded with schoolboys of all ranks of life gathered together from town and country, and consisted of nothing more than a collection of class-rooms devoted to the giving of instruction in lecture form. This stepping-stone of junior classes 15 threw open the higher education to hundreds of youths whose equals in England had no such advantage at that time. Scots University education besides being thorough was decidedly cheap, so that the church, law, and medicine received many recruits from the class out of which Simpson was drawn. ”

“ In student days when struggles came and the path seemed dark and beset with dangers, the knowledge of the firm faith in his powers of the family at home and of the scarcely smaller faith of the weavers, was a powerful incentive in the moments when he required any other than that of the spirit within him. ”

“ Fortunately for Simpson and for the University, the appointment did not lie in the gift of the professors, but was entirely in the hands of the Town Council, comprising thirty-three citizens.
Such an election was always a matter of keen interest to the inhabitants of Edinburgh, and each candidate brought all the direct and indirect influence within his power to bear on every councillor whom he could reach. The Professors in the various faculties had no doubt great influence; they openly canvassed for the candidate they favoured, and did not hesitate to decry those they did not approve of. ”

“ If we are asked for what we are most to honour Simpson, we answer, not so much for the discoveries he made, not for the instruments he invented, not for his exposure of numerous evils, not for the introduction of reforms, not for any particular contribution to science, literature, or archæology ”

“ These men thoroughly enjoyed the evident interest of the “young philosopher” in their discussions and demonstrations, at the same time kindly directing his mind towards the simple, painstaking, true methods of observing and reflecting upon nature. There was no lack of change in his environment for him; his interest in natural phenomena was roused and kept alive during his drives round the countryside delivering bread to the farmers and cottagers, or in occasional visits to his parents’ relations. ”

“ No man will in any case of doubt and danger entrust to your professional care the guardianship of his own life or of the life of those who are near and dear to his heart, merely because you happen to be on terms of intimacy with him. The self-interest of human nature forbids it.... The accomplishments which render you acceptable in the drawing-room are not always those that would make your visits longed for or valued in the chamber of sickness and sorrow.... Give therefore your whole energies to medicine ”

“ When Simpson began his studies Knox was the great lion, without a visit to whose class-room no sojourn in Edinburgh was complete; just as in later years Simpson’s house in Queen Street was the resort of all sorts and conditions of distinguished people.
The University had little control over her students once they were outside the gates of the quadrangle. There were no residential colleges; each youth found lodgings for himself suitable to his means, and led a perfectly independent life. ”

“ Every opportunity that arose for advancement found him prepared to take full advantage of it.
That his lectures on pathology were acceptable was made manifest by the address presented to him by the students of the class at the end of his temporary term of office, testifying to his zeal, fidelity, and success, their admiration of his high talents, of the varied and extensive research which he displayed, and of his uniform and kind affability which, while it exalted him in the eyes of all as a teacher, endeared him to each as a friend. ”

“ Let your own professional character be the one great patron to whom you ever look for your professional advancement.” He exhorted the young practitioners above all to save and economise their time, and to regard it as a property to be avaricious of and of every item of which they were to render a proper account to themselves. “It is by carefully preserving, confirming, and making diligent use of these broken and disjointed portions of it, which others thoughtlessly waste and destroy, that almost all the highest reputations in the 76 medical profession have been formed.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Strong opposition on these grounds came from the Dublin School, and with characteristic boldness Simpson turned to the statistics of their own lying-in hospital to prove his contention that to abolish parturient pain was to diminish the peril of the process. Again the statistics stood him in good stead; he flourished them triumphantly before his opponents, and proceeded to deal with those who asserted that the use of anæsthetics was accompanied by danger to life. ”

“ 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. ”