I54 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. Queen Street.
hospitality was princely, his charity and his philanthropy
to the poor were boundless; and amid the
crowds of patients and visitors-many of them of
the highest rank in Europe-with whom his house
overflowed, the grand professor moved with unaffected
ease and gaiety, and talking of everything,
from some world-wide discovery in the most severe
of the severer sciences, to the last new novel. He
had.a !vord or a jest for all.
How he camed on his gigantic practice-how
he achieved his splendid and apparently unaccountable
scientific investigations-how he found
time for his antiquarian and literary labours, and
yet was able to take a prominent part in every
public, and still more in every philanthropic,
movement, was ever a mystery to all who knew
him.
But during the long and weary watches of the
night, beside the ailing or the dying, when watching
perilous cases with which he alone could grapple,
he sat by the patient?s side with book or pen in
hand, for not a moment of his priceless time was
ever wasted.
? Many of my most brilliant papers,? he once
said to his students, ?were composed at the bedside
of my patients.? Yet he never neglected
them, even the most poor and needy-and they
had his preference even to the peers and princes
of the land. As a physician he had fewer failures
and made fewer mistakes than most men, and he
saved the lives of thousands. Simpson was not a
specialist-his mind was too broad and great for
that; and no one ever excelled him in the ingenuity,
simplicity, and originality of his treatment.
When other men shrank from the issues of life
and death, he was swift to do, to dare, and to save ;
and it is a curious fact that on the night Simpson
was born in his father?s humble abode in the village
of Bathgate, the village doctor has marked in his
case-book that on that occasion he ?amved too
late ! ?
By the introduction of chloroform into his practice,
the labour of 2,000 years of investigation culminated.
A new era was inaugurated for woman,
though the clergy rose in wrath, and denounced it
as an interference with the laws of Providence.
It was on the 28th of November, 1847, that he
became satisfied of the safety of using chloroform
by?experimenting on himself and two other medical
men. ? Drs. Simpson, Keith, and Duncan,? we
are told, (? sat each with a. tumbler in hand, and in
the tumbler a napkin. Chloroform was poured
upon each napkin, and inhaled. Simpson, after a
while, drowsy as he was, was roused by Dr. Duncan
snoring, and by Dr. Keith kicking about in a far
from graceful way. He saw at once that he must
have been sent to sleep by the chloroform. He saw
his friends still under its effects. In a word, he
saw tliat the great discovery had been made, and that
his long labours had come to a successful end.?
Since then how much bodily anguish has vanished
under its silent influence! In Britain there are
now many manufactories of chloroform; and in
Edinburgh alone there is one which makes about
three millions of doses yearly-evidence, as Simp
son said, of ? the great extent to which the practice
is now carried of wrapping men, women, and
children in a painless sleep during some of the
most trying moments and hours of human existence,
and especially when our frail brother man is laid
upon the operating-table and subjected to the torture
of the surgeons? knives and scalpels, his saws
and his cauteries.?
As to his invention of acupressure in lieu of the
ligature, though its adoption has not become general
throughout the surgical world, the introduction of
this simple method of restraining haemorrhage would
of itself have entitled Simpson to enrol his name
among the greatest surgeons of Europe.
The last great movement with which he was
connected was hospital reform. He argued that
while only one in 180 patients who had even an
arm amputated died in the country or in their
homes, one in thirty died in hospitals. His idea
was that the unit of a hospital was not the ward,
but the bed, and the ideal hospital should have
every patient absolutely shut off from every other,
so that the unhealthy should not pollute or injure
the healthy.
As an antiquarian and archeologist he held the
highest rank, and for some years was president of
the Scottish Society of Antiquaries.
His religious addresses were remarkable for their
sweetness, freshness, and fervour ; and one which
he gave at the last of some special religious
services held in the Queen Street Hall during the
winter of 1861-2 made a great impression on all
who heard him.
He was member of a host of learned societies,
the mere enumeration of which would tire the
reader. ?These were his earthly honours; but
:heir splendour pales when we think that on what-
:ver spot on earth a human being suffers, and is
released from anguish by the application of those
liscoveries his mighty genius has revealed to manrind,
his name is remembered with gratitude, and
issociated with the noblest and greatest of those
who, in all ages of the world, have devoted their
ives and their genius to enlightening and brightenng
the lot of humanity.?
.
I
Queen Spcet.1 PROFESSOR WILSONS MOTHER. I < <
He died of disease of the heart at 52, Queen
Street, on the 6th May, 1870, and never was man
more lamented by all ranks and classes of society ;
and nothing in life so became him, as the calmness
and courage with which he left it.
His own great skill had taught him that from
the first his recovery was doubtful, and in speaking
of a possibly fatal issue, his principal reason for
desiring life was that he hoped, if it were God?s
will, that he might have been spared to do a little
more service in the cause of hospitak reform ; all
his plsns and prospects were limited by this reference
to t!ie Divine will.
?If God takes me to-night,? said he to a friend,
? I feel that I am resting on Christ with the simple
faith of a child.? And in this faith he passed
away.
His funeral was a great and solemn ovation
indeed ; and never since Thomas Chatmers was laid
in his grave had Edinburgh witnessed such a scene
as that exhibifed in Queen Streqt on the 13th May.
From the most distant shires, even of the Highlands
aed the northern counties of England, and
from London, people came to pay their last tribute
to him whom one of the London dailies emphatically
styled ?the grand old Scottish doctor.?
St. Luke?s Free Church, near his house, was made
the meeting place of the general public. In front
of the funeral car were the Senatus Academicus,
headed by the principal, Sir Alexander Grant of
Dalvey, and the Royal College of Physicians, all
in academic costume; the magistrates, with all
their official robes and insignia; all the literary,
scientific, legal, and commercial bodies in the city
sent their quota of representatives, which, together
with the High Constables and students, made altogether
1,700 men in deep mourning.
The day was warm and bright, and vast crowds
thronged every street from his house to the grave
on the southern slope of Wnrriston cemetery, and
on every side were heard ever and anon the
lamentations of the poor, while most of the shops
were closed, and the bells of the churches tolled.
The spectators were estimated at IOO,OOO, and
the most intense decorum prevailed. An idea of
the length of the procession may be gathered from
the fact that, although it consisted of men marching
in sections of fours, it took upwards of. thirty-three
minutes to pass a certain point.
A grave was offered in Westminster, but declined
DY his family, who wished to have him buried
among themselves. A white marble bust of him
by Brodie was, however, placed there in 1879.
NO. 53 Queen Street, the house adjoining that
of Sir James, was the residence of Mrs. Wilson,
mother of Professor John Wilson, widow of a
wealthy gauze manufacturer. Her maiden name
was Margaret Sym, and her brother Robert figures
in the Noctes Ambrosiamz, under the cognomen of
I? Timothy Tickler.? Wilson?s Memoirs ? contain
many of his own letters, datedfrom thke, after r806
till his removal to Anne Street. There he wrote his
I? Isle of Palms,? prior to his marriage with Miss
Jane Penny in May, I 8 I I, and there, with his young
wife and her sisters, he was resident with the old
lady at the subsequent Christmas. His father
left him an unencumbered fortune of ~ 5 0 , 0 0 0 ,
which had enabled him to cut a good figure at
Oxford.
?A little glimpse of the life at 53 Queen Street,
and the pleasant footing subsisting between the
relatives gathered there, is afforded in a note of
young Mrs. Wilson about this time to a sisterYm
says Mrs. Gordon. ?She thanks ?Peg? for her
note, which, she says, ?was sacred to myself. It is
not my custom, you may tell her, to show my
letters to John.? She goes on to speak of Edinburgh
society, dinners, and evening parties, and
whom she most likes. The Rev. Mr. Morehead is
Mr. Jeffrey is ? a homd little
man,? but ? held in as high estimation here as the
Bible.? Mrs. Wilson senior gives a ball, and 150
people are invited. ? The girls are looking forward
to it with great delight. Mrs. Wilson is very nice
with them, and lets them ask anybody they like.
There is not the least restraint put upon them.
John?s poems will be sent from here next week.
The large size is a guinea, and the small one
twelve shillings.? ?
Elsewhere we are told that John Wilson?s
? home was in Edinburgh. His mother received
him into her house, where he resided till 1819.?
She was a lady whose domestic management
was the wonder and admiration of all zealous
housekeepers. Under one roof, in 53 Queen
Street, she contrived to accommodate three distinct
families; and there, besides the generosity exercised
towards her own, she was hospitable to all, and
her chanty to the poor was unbounded ; and when
she died, ?it was, as it were, the extinction of a
bright particular star, nor can any one who ever
saw her altogether forget the effect of her presence.
She belonged to that old school of Scottish ladies
whose refinement and intellect never interfered
with duties the most humble.?
In those days in Edinburgh the system of a
household neither sought nor suggested a number
of servants ; thus many domestic duties devolved
upon the lady herself: for example, the china
-usually a rare set-after breakfast and tea, was
a great favourite
