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.?
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