6 May: Boreham on James Simpson

A Century of Chloroform
Who, reviewing the records of two world wars, and conjuring up a vision of the hospitals of the world, can suppress a shudder as he asks himself what it would have been like without anaesthetics? Chloroform was introduced by Sir James Simpson just a century ago.[1] With unutterable gratitude the story will this year be recalled and recited in every corner of the earth. It is, on its purely personal side, a romance in itself. Sir James Barrie and others have familiarised us with the heroic way in which, a few generations back, the poorest families in Scotland would cheerfully make the most heartbreaking sacrifices, and endure the most humiliating privations, in order that one boy in the family—a lad o' pairts—might go to the university and take his place in one of the learned professions. It was by an act of domestic devotion of this fine kind, on the part of a village baker and his seven sons, that James Simpson was enabled to take his medical course and to become one of humanity's most illustrious benefactors.

Ridiculously young, painfully shy and horribly lonely, James entered the arts classes at Edinburgh at the age of 14. For the sake of his father and brothers, who had stinted themselves every day of their lives for his sake, he determined to succeed or perish. He completed his medical course in the year in which he came of age; was made senior president of the Royal Medical Society at Edinburgh at 24 and, at the age of 28, was appointed Professor of Midwifery. It must not be assumed, however, that it was all plain sailing. There were days in the early part of his career in which neither he nor his friends were at all sure that his disposition and temperament would permit him to follow the course upon which he had so promisingly embarked.

The Recoil From Pain Inspires An Ideal
His nephew and successor, Sir Alexander Simpson, tells us that all who met his uncle were impressed, from the very beginning, by his gentle and sympathetic nature. In his student days the cries of a poor Highland woman under the knife of Dr. Robert Liston so unmanned him that he rushed from the operating theatre to Parliament House with some vague notion of finding less distressing work in a lawyer's office. But, on reflection, retreat seemed cowardly. If pain was such a dreadful thing, he ought to face, and conquer, it. He was powerfully influenced at this crucial stage by the creation-story in the book of Genesis. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof." Would it not be possible, he asked himself, to work along similar lines?

He set to work. First dabbling in mesmerism and then experimenting with sulphuric ether, he found himself dissatisfied, and yet detected in his failures crepuscular hints of ultimate success. He was absolutely convinced that, although as yet far from his destination, he was at least travelling along the right road. He diligently pursued his self-appointed path until, one evening in 1847, he discovered, not altogether pleasantly, the possibilities of chloroform. Every medical student has chuckled, at some time or other, at the story of that epoch-making escapade. Dr. George Keith and Dr. Matthew Duncan were Simpson's guests. After dinner, the three gentlemen withdrew and went downstairs to make experiments. Later on, the ladies whom they had forsaken were astonished, first by hearing noisy altercations and, after a spell of silence, by the sound of crashing glass. Rushing downstairs, they found all three gentlemen stretched on the floor in a state of stupefaction. Their prostration had been caused, not by inebriety, but by inhaling Simpson's new drug.

Painless Surgery Overcomes Silly Prejudice
The startling innovation was eventually recognised as the greatest discovery in a century of astounding discoveries. But, at the time, it awoke a storm of hostile criticism. The relief was so great that many people thought it positively uncanny and protested vigorously against its application. The abolition of pain, they argued, was an outrage on natural law. Especially violent was the opposition to the use of anaesthetics in obstetric surgery. Even the sanctions of holy writ were enlisted under the banner of the objectors. Was not anguish the natural heritage of woman in the hour of childbirth? Did not the Bible refer to such travail-pangs as the inevitable curse of Eve? Simpson stood undismayed. To the Bible his critics had appealed; by the Bible should they be discomfited! "My opponents forget," he retorted, "the sacred narrative in the second chapter of Genesis. If they turn to it they will find the record of the first surgical operation ever performed; and the inspired passage explicitly states that, before He took the rib from Adam's side, the Master of the universe caused a deep sleep to fall upon him." Queen Victoria lent her regal authority to the innovation; Her Majesty herself underwent chloroform at the birth of her next child.

Sir James Simpson cut a striking figure in his day "His head," says the Duke of Argyll, "was enormous, like the classical busts of Jupiter. Whilst his features were most attractive, he possessed a smile of ineffable sweetness and benevolence. It was a most noble and spiritual countenance." His title was conferred upon him in 1866; and, remembering the resolve with which he had returned to his profession after his youthful flight, he took, as the legend for his coat-of-arms, the words Victo Dolore, the Conqueror of Pain. He is still remembered in Scotland as a very great doctor, a very great gentleman and a very great Christian. "My greatest discovery, which I made one Christmas Day, that Christ is able to save to the uttermost any man who implicitly trusts Him." That simple but sublime confession expresses the spirit of his the entire life.

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on January 18, 1947.

F W Boreham

Image: Sir James Simpson