Queen Street.] SIR JAMES YOUNG SIMPSON. I53
office by Sir James Montgomery of Stanhope.
Early in the next century the house was the
residence of Sir William Cunningham, Bart, and in
more recent years had as an occupant the gallant
Sir Neil Douglas, Commander of the Forces in
Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle, who
commanded the Cameron Highlanders in the war
with France, and was contused by a ball at Quatre
Bras. It is now occupied by tlic Edinburgh Institution
for Education, the head of which is Dr.
Fergusson, F.R.S.E.
Nos. g and 10 were removed in 1844 to make
way for the present hall of the Royal College of
Physicians, on the demolition of the former one in
George Street. The foundation stone was laid on
the 8th of August, 1844, by the then president,
Dr. Renton, in presence of the Fellows of the
college and others. In it were deposited a copy of
the first edition of the ? Edinburgn Pharmacopeia,?
containing a list .of the Fellows of the college; a
work concerning its private affairs, printed several
years before ; an Edinburgh Almanac for the
current year; several British coins, and a silver
plate with a suitable Latin inscription.
It was designed by Thomas Hamilton, and ?is
adorned in front with an Attic Corinthian tetrastyle,
sunqounted by a common Corinthian distyle, and
is handsomely adorned by colossal statues of
iBsculapius, Hippocrates, and Hygeia ; but it was
barely completed when, ample though its accommodation
appeared to be, the rapid additions to
its library and the great increase in the number of
Fellows, consequent on a reduction of the money
entry, and other changes, seemed to .render an
extension necessary.
In No. 11 are the offices of the E&hurgh
Gazette, the representative of the paper started by
Captain Donaldson in 1699, and re-issued by the
same person in March, I 707.
Sir Henry Wellwood Moncriff, Bart., D.D., a
distinguished divine, wha for half a century was
one .of the brightest ornaments of the Scottish
Church, resided in No. 13 during the first years of
the present century. He died in August, 1827,
and his second, son, James, a senator, under the
title of Lord Moncrieff, succeeded to the baronetcy,
which is one of the oldest in Scotland, having
been conferred by Charles I. in 1626.
It was afterwards occupied by the Scottish
Heritable Security Company.
-The next house westward was the residence, at
the same time, of William Honeyman of Graemsay,
who was elevated to the bench as Lord Armadale,
and created a baronet in 1804. He had been pre.
viously Sheriff of the county of Lanarkshire. ?He mar.
88
*ied a daughter of Lord Braxfield, and died in 1825,
eaving ,behind him a reputation for considerable
dent and sound judgment, both as a barrister and
udge. He had two sons in the army-Patrick,
who served in the old -28th Light Dragoons, and
Robert, who died in Jamaica in 1809, Lieutenant-
Clolonel of the 18th Royal Irish.
His house is now occupied by the site of the
Zaledonian United Service Club, erected in 1853.
In 1811 No. 27 was the residence of General
Sraham Stirling, an old and distinguished officer,
whose family still occupy it. In the same year
4lexander Keith of Ravelston, Hereditary Knight
Marshal of Scotland, occupied No. 43. Behind the
louse line stands St. Luke?s Free Church, which has
i fictitious street front in the Tudor style, with two
-ichly crocketed finials.
No. 38 was the house of George Paton, ?Advocate,
md afterwards Lord Justice Clerk, whose suicide
nade much sensation in Edinburgh a few years
1go.
In No. 52 lived and died one of the most illus-
:rious citizens of Edinburgh-Professor Sir James .
Young Sirnpson, Bart., who came to Edinburgh a
poor and nearly friendless student, yet in time
ittained, as Professor of Midwifery in the University
and as the discoverer of extended uses of chlorolorm,
a colossal fame, not only in Europe, but
wherever the English language is spoken. He
obtained the chair of midwifery in r840, and seven
years after made his great discovery. In 1849 he
was elected President of the Edinburgh College
of Physicians; in 1852 President of the Medico-
Chirurgical Society ; and ?in the following year,
under circumstances of the greatest klat, Foreign
Associate of the French Academy of Medicine ?
In 1856 the French Academy of Sciences awarded
him the ? Monthyon Prize ? of 2,000 francs for the
benefits he conferred on humanity by the introduction
of anmthesia by chloroform into the practice
of surgery and midwifery.
A few weeks earlief, for the same noble cause, he
won the royal order of St. Olaf, from Oscar, King
of Sweden, and in 1866 was created a baronet of
Great Britain. His ,professional writings are too
numerous to be recorded here, suffice it to say
that they have been translated into every European
language.
No man ever attracted so many visitors to Edinburgh
as Sir James Simpson, for many Came to see
him who were not invalids. His house in Queeu
Street was the centre of attraction for men -of
letters and science from all parts of the worldphysicians,
naturalists, antiquarians, and literati of
all kinds were daily to be met at his table. His
