180
The general belief of the profession—but it was no more than a belief—was that operations performed in country practice were not so frightfully fatal as those performed in town hospitals. This was Simpson’s opinion, and he determined to test its truth by appeal to facts. He drew up a circular with a schedule for the insertion of results in a statistical form, and sent it far and wide amongst country practitioners. He awaited the result with anxious expectation; the circular asked for a plain statement of facts only, and for all he knew the facts might be against his theory; but they were not. From all over England and Scotland, particularly from mining districts, where severe operations after accidents were common, the filled-up schedules flowed in, to the number of 374. These were collected, carefully classified and summarised. The operations selected were amputations, and the result briefly was this:—
The relative mortality of the different amputations was also shown:—
The table on the next page compared the results of operations for injury with those performed for disease.
181
These statistics were accompanied by an exhaustive detailed examination and explanation; every possible point of attack was considered and protected. “I doubt not,” he said, “that the segregation of the sick from the sick—every diseased man being a focus of more or less danger to the diseased around him—is a principle of no small moment and value.” He attributed the comparative brilliancy of these statistical results to theisolationof the patients only; he endeavoured to show that the operations were often performed amidst dirty and squalid surroundings, on dirty and squalid persons. He did not attribute sufficient importance to the fact urged by many of his correspondents, who supported his general contentions almost to a man out of their own experience, that where fresh air, ventilation, and cleanliness prevailed, the results were always the most satisfactory.
The next step was to take hospital statistics of182similar operations, and the general result appears in the table onpage 183.
This testimony to the truth of Simpson’s opinion was more pronounced than even he himself had anticipated. “Shall this pitiless and deliberate sacrifice of human life to conditions which are more or less preventable be continued, or arrested? Do not these terrible figures plead eloquently and clamantly for a revision and reform of our existing hospital system?” This was his cry until at length breath failed him. The opposition was not strong, but the support was weak. Although there was much criticism, his conclusions were scarcely called in question at all; trifling holes were picked in his statistics, but his contentions were universally acknowledged to be correct; a few reformers only, persuaded as he was of the evils of hospitalism and working at the subject, lent him their advocacy. But he alone stood unperturbed at the extent of the evils and the magnitude of the change which he proposed in order to uproot them; death laid him low as he stood, but not before he had modified his proposals by suggesting that existing hospitals might be reconstructed, and new hospitals built on the now almost universally adopted pavilion system on which the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was one of the first to be built.
183
The steady advance of aseptic surgery has slowly but surely brought about the results which Simpson strove to attain by a radical measure. The enemy184which had baffled surgeons for centuries was revealed by Lister. He sent surgeons smiling into the operating-room practically certain of success instead of dreading the terrible onslaught upon their own handiwork of the formerly unseen and unknown destroyer. The death rate of operations is being daily brought nearer and nearer to vanishing point. In his review of the progress of wound treatment during the Victorian Era published in the Diamond Jubilee number ofThe Practitioner, Mr. Watson Cheyne says the mortality of major operations does not now exceed in hospitals more than three or four per cent., and this is made up practically entirely by cases admitted almost moribund and operated onin extremiswith faint hope of survival. The field of surgery, too, has been vastly enlarged, and the term “major operation” includes not merely operations of necessity, undertaken through ages past as the only possible means of saving life, but also operations which have become possible only in recent years—some of them performed merely to make the patient “more comfortable,” or even only “more beautiful.” And this glorious result is due, as Mr. Cheyne truly says, to the immortal genius of Lister.
In 1867 Simpson propounded in theMedical Times and Gazettea proposal for stamping out smallpox and other infectious diseases such as scarlet fever and measles. In spite of vaccination, which, however, was imperfectly carried out, smallpox alone carried off five185thousand lives annually in Great Britain. A serious outbreak of rinderpest in the British Islands amongst cattle had recently been arrested and exterminated by the slaughter of all affected animals. The disease spread as smallpox did by contagion, and Simpson fell to wondering why smallpox could not also be exterminated. His paper was a noteworthy contribution to the then infant science of Public Health, and his proposal, which was, however, universally regarded as impracticable, sprang from his courageous enthusiasm as did that concerning hospitals. He suggested that the place of the pole-axe in the extermination of rinderpest might in the arrest of smallpox be taken by complete isolation, and he laid down simple but rigid rules for its enforcement. An attempt was made to utilise these a few years after when an epidemic of fatal violence broke out in Edinburgh. He was in no way an anti-vaccinationist, but his isolation measures were too strong for the people in those days. We are not surprised that he boldly proposed this measure, for he related glaring instances of neglect of the simplest precautions. Beggars held up infants with faces encrusted with active smallpox into the very faces of passers-by in the streets of Edinburgh; and on one occasion a woman was found in Glasgow serving out sweetmeats to the children of a school with her hands and face covered by the disease. He cried aloud for legislation to prevent such gross abuses, which he did not hesitate to stigmatise as little short of criminal.
186CHAPTER XIFURTHER REFORMS—HONOURS
Professional and University Reform—Medical women—Honours—The Imperial Academy of Medicine of France—Baronetcy—Domestic bereavement—The University Principalship—Freedom of the City of Edinburgh—Bigelow of Boston—Views on education—Graduation addresses.
Professional and University Reform—Medical women—Honours—The Imperial Academy of Medicine of France—Baronetcy—Domestic bereavement—The University Principalship—Freedom of the City of Edinburgh—Bigelow of Boston—Views on education—Graduation addresses.
Professor Simpson took a warm interest in medical politics, and made himself heard as a member of the Senatus of the University. That body was not renowned for any spirit of harmony prevailing in its midst; it included the medical professors many of whom were in professional opposition to each other and were actuated by conflicting interests. The rivalry prevailing amongst the leaders of the profession in the Scots capital was amusingly shown in one of Sir James’s letters, where he related how Professor Miller had just given a capital address to the young graduates and recommended them to marry chiefly because Mr. Syme had advised the reverse two years before. “At least,” he said, “so Mr. Syme187whispered to me, and so, indeed, did Miller himself state to Dr. Laycock!”
On the principles of Medical Reform and University Reform the professors were, however, practically unanimous, but their interests came into conflict with those of the extra-academical school. The two opposing bodies worked hard to gain their own ends when a Parliamentary Committee was appointed in 1852 to inquire into medical reform. The modern Athens became once more disturbed by wordy warfare. The general ends aimed at by the reformers were the obtaining of a proper standing for qualified practitioners; some satisfactory means of enabling the public to distinguish between regular and irregular, quack, practitioners; and to define the amount of general and professional knowledge necessary for degrees and qualifications. It was also desired to remove the absurd anomaly whereby, although Scots medical education was then ahead of English, Scots graduates had no legal standing in England. The Medical Act which was passed in 1858 carried out many of the best suggestions made before the Committee, and effected desirable improvements both in the status of practitioners and in medical education; but it was inadequate, as time has shown, and the question of reform still burns. Simpson took an active interest in the proceedings before the Committee, and made several dashes up to London to further the projects which he had at heart. The188annual meeting of the British Medical Association was held in Edinburgh in July, 1858, at the moment when the fate of the Bill hung in the balance. As the journal of the Association said at the time the fruit of a quarter of a century’s growth was plucked in the midst of the rejoicings. Sir Robert Christison publicly stated that owing to Simpson’s energetic efforts certain far-reaching and objectionable clauses, which had been allowed to creep into the Bill, were expunged at the last moment. Simpson went up to London by the night train, employed the following day in effecting his purpose, and returned the next night; this was when the journey took nearly twice as many hours as now.
The Universities (Scotland) Act was also passed in 1858; by it the complete control of the University, and with it the patronage of many of the Chairs, was lost to its original founders, the Town Council, who had so carefully and successfully guided it through nearly three centuries. The Council did not part from their charge without a struggle; in urging their cause they proudly pointed to the fact that they had appointed Simpson to the Chair of Midwifery against the opposition of the medical faculty. To have elected him, they thought, under such circumstances displayed their discernment, vindicated their existence, and pleaded for the perpetuation of their elective office.
When the question of the admission of women to189the study of medicine came up in Edinburgh and divided the ancient city once more into two hostile camps, Simpson’s sympathies appear to have gone with the sex to which he was already a benefactor. He recognised that there was a place, if a small one, within the ranks of the profession for women; and when the question came to the vote he cast his in their favour. The proposal, however, was rejected, and has only quite recently become law in the University.
Numerous honours were heaped upon him during the last five-and-twenty years of his life. In 1847 he filled the office of President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, and in 1852 held the corresponding post in the Medico-Chirurgical Society. In the following year the Imperial Academy of Medicine of France—a body which lacks an analogue in this country—conferred upon him the title of Foreign Associate. This was a jealously guarded honour awarded only to the most highly distinguished men of the day, and it was conferred upon Simpson in an altogether unprecedented manner which doubled its value. According to custom a commission of members prepared a list of renowned men whom they advised the Academy to elect; in the list no British name appeared although Owen, Faraday, and Bright were entered as “reserves.” On the day of election the members accepted all the candidates named in the original list until the last was reached. When the190president asked for the vote for this individual a sensational and truly Gallic scene was enacted. Almost to a man the members rose, and loud and long proclaimed Simpson’s name. Excited speeches were made, and amidst great enthusiasm he was elected to the one remaining vacancy by an overwhelming majority. It had remained for Simpson to prove, as the President courteously pointed out at the time, that there existed a greater honour than that of being elected by the Academy—viz., that of being chosen inspiteof the will of the Academy itself.
This was by no means the only honour awarded to him by France. In 1856 the French Academy of Sciences voted him the Monthyon Prize of two thousand francs for “the most important benefits done to humanity.” Other foreign societies added their compliments, and he was elected Foreign Associate of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, of the Parisian Surgical and Biological Societies, and of the Medical Societies of Norway, Stockholm, Copenhagen, New York, Massachusetts, Leipsic, and other places.
In 1866 his own country made an acknowledgment of his eminent attainments when the Queen offered him a baronetcy on the advice of Lord John Russell. Twice before he had refused a title, but this time he wrote to his brother that he feared hemustaccept although it appeared so absurd to take a title. This honour was the first of its kind ever conferred upon a doctor, or even upon a professor, in Scotland. It was191entirely unsought, and scarcely welcomed by its recipient for its own sake; he regarded it not merely as a personal honour but also as a tardy recognition of the services of the Edinburgh school in the cause of medicine. He enjoyed the congratulations which showered upon him, and felt glad when the citizens flocked to Queen Street to express their feelings, much to Lady Simpson’s delight. The medical papers unanimously approved of the honour, theLancetremarking that apart from his connection with chloroform, Simpson was distinguished as an obstetric practitioner, as a physiologist, as an operator, and as a pathologist of great research and originality.
Domestic bereavement quenched the rejoicings over the baronetcy, and condolences displaced congratulations. He fell ill for a time himself, and in a condition of unusual mental depression spoke of the baronetcy as appearing even more of a bauble in sickness than in health. In less than a fortnight after the offer of the title his eldest son David died after a short illness. He had been educated for the medical profession, and was a youth of considerable promise and of an earnest temperament; his death fell as a severe blow, and Simpson even contemplated abandoning the baronetcy which had not yet been formally conferred. The words of his friends, however, and the thought that his dead son had particularly insisted on its acceptance, persuaded him.
A coat of arms had to be drafted for the new192Baronet, and this was a pleasant interest for one of his tastes. The family history was searchingly entered into, and the arms of his father’s family were differenced on the most correct lines with those of the Jervays from whom his mother had sprung. In the matter of a crest he was able to be boldly original, and adopted the rod of Æsculapius over the mottoVicto dolore, and thus handed down to his family the memory of his great victory over pain. In June of the same year, 1866, the University of Oxford conferred upon him one of the few honours which reached him from England in awarding him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law. The University of Dublin made him an honorary Doctor of Medicine, and he was created an honorary Fellow of the King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians of Ireland.
By the death of the veteran Sir David Brewster, in February, 1868, the office of Principal of Edinburgh University fell vacant. This post is a survival from the earliest days. The College out of which the University grew was established in 1583 by the Town Council under a charter granted by James VI. Only one regent or tutor was necessary at first to teach the “bairns,” as the students were termed in the contract entered into between Rollock, the first regent, and the city fathers. Rollock was promised that as the college increased “in policy and learning” he should be advanced to the highest post created. By his own efforts the number of students increased so greatly193that within the first few years several other regents were appointed, and the Council, remembering their promise, dignified him with the title of Principal or First Master in 1586. This office was held during the succeeding two centuries by a series of more or less worthy men, prominent among whom were Leighton, afterwards Archbishop of Glasgow, and William Carstares, better known as a statesman and for his connection with the Rye House Plot in 1684. During Carstares’s tenure the tutors were turned into professors, and the college became more strictly speaking a university, although from the first it had assumed without any right by charter the function of degree-granting. Although the utility of the post quite vanished when the college became a university, and the principal had no place in the constitution of a university, nevertheless the principalship was not abolished. The Universities Act of 1858 recognised the office, but only as that of an ornamental head, acting as president of the assembly of professors constituting the Senatus Academicus. The salary is a thousand pounds a year with an official residence, not within the precincts or the University. The former head master of the college, known by and knowing every student, became a sinecurist of whose existence it is no exaggeration to say many of the students are, through no fault of their own, unaware. Brewster had been a distinguished occupant of the post—distinguished not as a principal, for he received the appointment only at the age of194seventy-eight, but as a scientist. To the public he was best known as the author of the “Life of Sir Isaac Newton,” and as the inventor of the kaleidoscope. It is said that Brewster never spoke as much as five lines at the meetings of the Senatus Academicus without having previously written them down; and it is probable that this lack of spontaneous utterance from the Chairman gave the tone to the assembly. The rival professors doubtless nursed their animosities for some less dignified meeting-place, differing there only on the most correct academic lines.
It is not surprising that Simpson at first refused to be a candidate for the vacant post. He would undoubtedly have made an unrivalled figure-head for hisAlma Mater; he was the leading figure in Scotland already and “did the hospitalities” of Edinburgh to distinguished visitors of all classes. But he would probably have been obliged to resign his professorship and have thus been cut off from his sphere of greatest usefulness; and although he would have grasped with ease the details of university affairs it is open to question whether he would have suitably filled the post of president over men to many of whom he was in professional opposition. The most that the suggestion that he should be a candidate conveyed was a well-meant compliment, but it would have been a greater compliment on his part if he had really ended his life as the ornamental head of the University he had already done so much to adorn. He would195certainly have turned his position to good account, and perhaps might have earned the gratitude of all succeeding students by improving their position in the University and bettering their relationship with their teachers—a much needed reform at that time. But he was a man for more active occupation, and it was more fitting that he should persevere to the end in the work of his life. Simpson expressed his opinion that the most suitable man for the post was the one already named by Brewster and desired by a majority of the Senatus; but that man, Professor Christison, then over seventy years of age, generously said that Sir Alexander Grant, an active candidate, would better fill the post. A strong section of Edinburgh folks persisted in pushing Simpson, and in deference to their wishes he consented to enter the lists. It cannot be said that he displayed any of the eager energy which had marked his candidature for the midwifery chair; but his friends made up for his comparative apathy. They were met by a strong opposition, not instigated by his rivals for the post, but offered by insignificant persons who cherished ill-will against him and spread untrue statements with the object of damaging his character. Greatly owing to the reports spread in this manner he was not elected. Sir Alexander Grant became the new Principal. The fact that he could not gain the post was communicated to him in a letter which reached him one morning before prayers. He conducted the worship as usual196after reading the letter, and when the family had afterwards all assembled at the breakfast table he intimated the fact to them and dismissed the subject from his mind with the quiet remark, “I have lost the Principalship.”
An interesting episode pertaining to this period was narrated by the Free Church minister of Newhaven. “The election,” he wrote to Dr. Duns, “took place on a Monday, and it was on the Sabbath preceding, between sermons, that one of my people, a fisherman, called on me stating that his wife was apparently dying, but that she and all her friends were longing most intensely for a consultation with Sir James. I did not know well what to do, for I knew that his mind was likely to be very much harassed, and I shrank from adding to his troubles. But in the urgency of the case I wrote him a note simply stating that one of the best women in the town was at the point of death and longed for his help, leaving the matter without another word to himself. The result was that he came down immediately, spent three hours beside his patient, performed, I am told, miracles of skill, and did not leave her till the crisis was over. She would, I am assured, have died that evening, but she was one of the sincerest mourners at his funeral, and she still lives to bless his memory. After all was over he went into a friend’s house and threw himself down on a sofa in a state of utter exhaustion. This was the way in which, without hope of fee or reward,197and while others were waiting for him able to give him both, Sir James spent the evening preceding the election. Some will say it was no great matter after all. Why, for that part of it, neither was the cup of cold water which the dying Sir Philip Sidney passed from his own lips to those of a wounded soldier in greater agony than himself. But the incident is recalled whenever his name is mentioned as adding to the glory of the knightsans peur et sans reproche, and the incident I have mentioned in the Newhaven fisherman’s house surely gives to Sir James a place beside him in the glorious order of chivalrous generosity.”
Among the last of the honours offered to Simpson was the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh; a fitting tribute from the City in which and for which he had so nobly and untiringly laboured. It was proposed to present him with the burgess-ticket at the same time that it was publicly presented to another hero in a different sphere, Lord Napier of Magdala; but by his own desire the ceremony was postponed so far as he was concerned in order that full honour might be paid to Lord Napier. At the eventual presentation the Lord Provost made a short speech recapitulating the achievements for which they desired to honour him, and referring to his reputation as being great on the banks of the Thames and the Seine, as well as on the shores of the Firth of Forth; he likewise expressed the pride of his fellow-citizens that Sir James had remained amongst them198and had not been drawn away like other men of genius before him by the attractions of the greater metropolis of the south. Simpson’s reply took the form of an impromptu review of his career from the time he first entered the City as a wonderstruck boy. “I came,” he proudly said, “to settle down and fight amongst you a hard and up-hill battle of life for bread and name and fame, and the fact that I stand here before you this day so far testifies that in the arduous struggle I have—won.”
The accounts of the speeches delivered on this occasion which reached America raised the indignation of Dr. Bigelow, of Boston. Reference had been made to chloroform in a manner which appeared to slight Morton’s work in introducing ether as an anæsthetic before chloroform was heard of. In Bigelow’s estimation Simpson posed as a hero at the expense of Morton. Simpson had certainly been far from liberal in his allusions to Morton and others in his article upon Anæsthesia in theEncyclopædia Britannica, and had written almost entirely about his own discovery. A controversy was excited, and on his deathbed Simpson wrote a letter to Bigelow to prove that he had duly considered the priority and the value of Morton’s and Wells’s work. In his concluding sentences he expressed regret at having taken up so much of his own and his correspondent’s time in such a petty discussion, but blamed his illness which prevented him from writing with the force and brevity required.199“With many of our profession in America,” he said, “I have the honour of being personally acquainted, and regard their friendship so very highly that I shall not regret this attempt—my last, perhaps—at professional writing as altogether useless on my part if it tend to fix my name and memory duly in their love and esteem.”
The widespread national expression of the sense of loss and of sympathy which reached Edinburgh from the United States after Sir James’s death testified to the regard in which he was held from one end to the other of that country. In Boston itself the Gynæcological Society, of which he had been the first honorary member, convened a special memorial meeting, which was solemn and impressive. He had not been mistaken in presuming with his last breath that he held the regard of his Americanconfrères.
On the subject of education Simpson held what were considered advanced opinions, but which had already been expressed by Mr. Lowe. A few years before his death he delivered a lecture on Modern and Ancient Languages at Granton, in which he lamented the common neglect of modern languages in the education of the day. He had personally felt the want of a mastery over French and German, both in the course of his studies and during his travels; nor did he feel the want compensated for by his ability to write and talk in Latin. He strongly200advocated the paying of more attention to the modern and less to the dead languages, and he urged that natural science should take its place in the ordinary curriculum of the great public schools. These views were used as an argument against his fitness for the post of Principal of the ancient University.
On three separate occasions it fell to Simpson’s lot to deliver the annual address to the newly-fledged graduates, which is the duty of the professors of the medical faculty in rotation. 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, hisAlma Materand her priests have discovered an affectionate regard for him and his welfare. A few years later the struggling young practitioner may perhaps turn to the copy of this graduation address, forwarded to him by post with the author’s compliments, and find in such an one as Simpson delivered much to strengthen and encourage him. In 1842 and 1855 he delivered addresses from which quotations have already been made; and in the third one, spoken in 1868, he made a forecast of the future of medical science, predictinginter aliathat by concentration201of electric or other lights we should yet be enabled to make many parts of the body sufficiently diaphanous for inspection by the practised eye of the physician. It was his habit to commit such lectures to memory and to deliver them without notes. He was a ready public speaker on any subject in which he was interested; speeches made on the spur of the moment teemed with pleasantly-put facts and apt anecdotes from the vast storehouse of his memory. A speech from Sir James was one of the treats in which Edinburgh folks delighted.
202CHAPTER XIIFAILING HEALTH—DEATH
Poetical instincts—Religious views—Religious and emotional influences in his life—Doubts—Revivalism—Health—Overwork tells—Bed—Gradual failure—Death on May 6, 1870—Grave offered in Westminster Abbey—Buried at Warriston—Obituary notices—Bust in the Abbey—His greatness.
Poetical instincts—Religious views—Religious and emotional influences in his life—Doubts—Revivalism—Health—Overwork tells—Bed—Gradual failure—Death on May 6, 1870—Grave offered in Westminster Abbey—Buried at Warriston—Obituary notices—Bust in the Abbey—His greatness.
The emotional part of Sir James Simpson’s nature found some small expression in versifying both, as we have seen, in early years and in later days. We know that he was a close student of Shakspeare, but Miss Simpson states that her father probably never entered a theatre, so that he can never have seen a representation. He was familiar with modern poets, especially with Burns. It is related that he once tested a lady friend’s insight into the vernacular by quoting from memory for explanation the following lines from the national bard:—
“Baudrons sit by the ingle-neuk,An’ wi’ her loof her face she’s washin’,Willie’s wife it nae sae trig,She dichts her grunzie wi’ a hooschen.”
“Baudrons sit by the ingle-neuk,An’ wi’ her loof her face she’s washin’,Willie’s wife it nae sae trig,She dichts her grunzie wi’ a hooschen.”
“Baudrons sit by the ingle-neuk,
An’ wi’ her loof her face she’s washin’,
Willie’s wife it nae sae trig,
She dichts her grunzie wi’ a hooschen.”
203
His own verses were neither better nor worse than those written by other men whose abilities have led them to excel in more practical pursuits. In youth they celebrated student life, or were, as usual, dedicated to Celia’s eyebrows; in mature life they were of a more serious, and latterly of a strong religious description. At all times he delighted in writing little doggerel verses to his children or friends; valueless as such efforts are, they served a useful purpose; their composition was a recreation and pleasant relief to his over-taxed brain, while it was an amusement to him to watch their effect upon the recipients, and perhaps to receive a reply clothed also in the garb of rhyme.
Sir James’s example so influenced the people amongst whom he lived that it is impossible to omit reference to his attitude throughout life towards religion and an account of what is one of the most interesting phases in his history. Up to Christmas, 1861, he had been, in the eyes of the religious public, an ordinary citizen; as regular in church-going as his professional engagements permitted; thoroughly interested in Church affairs, and a strong supporter of his own Church; possessing to the full the national characteristic of intimate acquaintance with the letter of the Old and New Testaments; and something of a theologian as well, as his answer to the religious objections to anæsthesia showed. At that period, to the delight of many, and the genuine204astonishment of others among his fellow-citizens, he became a leading spirit in the strong Evangelical movement which was then spreading through the country, “Simpson is converted,” cried the enthusiastic revivalist. “Simpson is converted now,” laughed those who had opposed every action of his. “If Professor Simpson is converted, it is time some of the rest of us were seeing if we do not need to be converted,” wisely answered one of his friends. In the ordinary sense of the word Simpson was not converted. Had he passed away without developing this latter-day Evangelical enthusiasm, all sects would still have united in thankfulness that such a man had lived. Why this religious revival during the sixties affected him as it did becomes evident in looking at the religious, moral, and emotional influences which affected him throughout his career.
The simple-minded, devout mother, strong in faith and strong in works, who passed out of his life when he was but nine years old, left a vivid impression on the boy’s mind. In after years he would call up the picture of the good woman retiring from the shop and the worries and troubles of daily life into which she had so vigorously thrown herself and so bravely faced even with failing health, into the quiet little room behind, to kneel down in prayer; and would describe how at other times she went about her work chanting to herself one of the old Scots metrical psalms:
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“Jehovah hear thee in the day, when trouble He did sendAnd let the name of Jacob’s God thee from all ill defend.Let Him remember all thy gifts, accept thy sacrifice,Grant thee thine heart’s wish and fulfil thy thoughts and counsel wise.”
“Jehovah hear thee in the day, when trouble He did sendAnd let the name of Jacob’s God thee from all ill defend.Let Him remember all thy gifts, accept thy sacrifice,Grant thee thine heart’s wish and fulfil thy thoughts and counsel wise.”
“Jehovah hear thee in the day, when trouble He did send
And let the name of Jacob’s God thee from all ill defend.
Let Him remember all thy gifts, accept thy sacrifice,
Grant thee thine heart’s wish and fulfil thy thoughts and counsel wise.”
He used to relate one memory of her, touching in its simplicity: how one day he entered the house with a big hole in his stocking which she perceived and drew him on to her knee to darn. As she pulled the repaired garment on she said, “My Jamie, when your mother’s away, you will mind that she was a grand darner.” He remembered the words as if they had been spoken but yesterday, and subsequently offered to a lady who had established a girls’ Industrial School in his native village a prize for the best darning.
The simple faith which beat in the life of the Bathgate baker’s household was ingrained into James Simpson; he went forth into the world full of it, and full of the determination that by his fruits he should be known.
The tender, loving care for his welfare of his sisters and brothers, particularly of Sandy, who never faltered in his inspired belief in James’s great future, kept alive in Simpson something of his mother’s affectionate nature, and kindled the sympathies and emotions which bulked so large in his character. His goodness was displayed in his kindly treatment of the poor, who formed at first the whole and afterwards no small part of his patients. When name and fame and bread were his, he did not turn his back on the poor, but206as we have seen, ever placed his skill at their disposal for no reward, as readily as he yielded it to the greatest in the land. As in his daily practice, so in his greatest professional efforts, the revelation of chloroform, the fight for anæsthesia, the introduction of acupressure, the crusade against hospitalism, one thought breathed through his work—that he might do something to better the condition of suffering humanity. He never attempted to keep discoveries in his own hands, to profit by the monopoly, but scattered wide the knowledge which had come to him that it might benefit mankind and grow stronger and wider in the hands of other workers.
In his domestic life he was a tender, loving, and companionable husband and father, a charming host, and a warm-hearted friend. “In this Edinburgh of ours,” says a recent writer, “there are familiar faces whose expression changes greatly at the mention of his name; there are men whose speech from formal and precise turns headlong and extravagant, as if it came from a new and inspired vocabulary.” In Scotland his personal influence was immense. As was afterwards written of him, “Great in his art, and peerless in resource, yet greater was he in his own great soul;” such a man stood in no need of the violent revolution in mode of life implied in conversion. A gradual process of development led to his feeling that although to labour was to pray, there was a need for more attention to the spiritual, even in his self-sacrificing life.
207
There is evidence that during a brief period of his career Simpson became affected by speculative doubts; indeed it would have been surprising if his mind had not been affected by some of the new schools of thought which sprang up in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, and appeared for a time to threaten a mortal antagonism to all that was dear to orthodox Christians. But these did not influence him long; true to his character he examined every new thought and finding it wanting remained firm in his old and tried faith, and ranged himself on the side of those who perceived nothing seriously incompatible between religion and modern science.
In his bearing, when the angel of sorrow afflicted his household with no unsparing hand, we find him always a religious-minded man. The first trial was the loss of the eldest child, his daughter Maggie, in 1844. Another daughter, Mary, was lost in early infancy. In 1848 his friend of boyhood and student days, Professor John Reid, was smitten with a painful malady and died after a prolonged period of suffering during which, knowing that the shadow of death was hanging over him, he devoted himself in retirement to religious thoughts. Experiences such as these made Simpson pause and question himself. Brimful of life and vigour, however much he came in contact with death in his professional rounds, the sight of it in his own inner circle powerfully stirred his emotional nature. His friend the Rev. Dr. Duns noticed in208him after these sad events a gradually increasing earnestness in his spiritual life, and a closer inquiry into the meanings of the Scriptures. He sought out the company, and placed himself under the influence of those among his patients whom he knew to possess fervid religious temperaments. The last mental stumbling-block was the question of prayer; he had seriously doubted in examining the question intellectually that human prayer could influence the purpose of the Deity. It is difficult, if not presumptuous, to inquire into the process whereby, under the guidance of spiritually minded friends, his doubts were satisfied.
“... One indeed I knewIn many a subtle question versed.”“He fought his doubts and gathered strength,He would not make his judgment blind,He faced the spectres of the mind,And laid them—thus he came at length”“To find a stronger faith his own.”
“... One indeed I knewIn many a subtle question versed.”
“... One indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed.”
“He fought his doubts and gathered strength,He would not make his judgment blind,He faced the spectres of the mind,And laid them—thus he came at length”
“He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind,
And laid them—thus he came at length”
“To find a stronger faith his own.”
“To find a stronger faith his own.”
The simple earnest faith of his fathers in which he had commenced life, ran all through his mature years and prompted his strong purposeful energies. After the combat with the only seriously perplexing doubt he re-embraced his faith with the simplicity of a child and the strength of a giant. For one accustomed to apply to every subject taken in hand the rigid process of careful scientific investigation, it required209no small effort to lay aside his usual methods and suffer himself to be led wholly by faith.
It was impossible for Simpson to enter into any movement without taking a prominent part in it. That Christmas Day on which all doubts left him was followed by days of extraordinarily zealous work, such as would have been expected of him after he had convinced himself that he had a mission to spread abroad this, the latest, and, in his opinion, the greatest, of his discoveries. He plunged at once into the midst of Evangelical societies, missions, and prayer-meetings, amongst the upper and lower classes of Edinburgh, and made excursions into the mining districts of his native county to deliver addresses. He interested himself in the education of theological students, and in foreign missions, and added to his literary work the writing of religious addresses, tracts and hymns. His example had a powerful influence in Edinburgh. It is said that he frequently addressed on a Sunday evening Evangelical assemblies of two thousand persons. The news of his so-called conversion was gleefully spread by well-meaning folks, who had given credence to statements published by his enemies, and imagined that here was a bad if a great man turned aside from the broad to the narrow path. This enthusiastic revival movement died down in time, and Simpson returned to his ordinary everyday life.
More sorrow soon fell to his lot. In 1862 his fifth child, James, who had always been an invalid, was210taken from him at the age of fifteen. In 1866 the sad death of Dr. David Simpson, the eldest son, which has already been referred to, was followed in about a month’s time by that of the eldest surviving daughter, Jessie, at the age of seventeen. The death of James, a sweet-natured child, stimulated him in the revival work. Pious friends had surrounded the little sufferer and led him to add his innocent influence in exciting his father’s religious emotions.
There is reason to believe that Simpson perceived much insincerity in the revival movement, and attempted to dissociate himself from active participation in it, on account of finding it impossible to work in harmony with some who, though loud in profession, flagrantly failed in practice.
The subject of Simpson’s health has been little referred to in these pages, because throughout his life he paid little attention to it. The chief remedy for the feeling of indisposition was change of work. He found it impossible to be idle, and sought as recreation occupations such as archæological research, or a scamper round foreign hospitals, which to most people would have savoured more of labour. The part of his body which was most worked, his nervous system, was naturally the one which most often troubled him with disorder; like other great men of high mental development he suffered from time to time with severe attacks of megrim, which necessitated a few hours of rest. The blood-poisoning, for which he availed himself211of Professor Syme’s services, was soon recovered from with prompt treatment ending in a foreign tour; but after it little illnesses became more frequent, and he was perforce occasionally confined to the house. During these times he busied himself, for the sake of occupation and to distract his attention from his sufferings, in professional reading or the preparation of literary papers. Rheumatic troubles became frequent, and soon after his eldest son’s death he had to run over to the Isle of Man to free himself from a severe attack of sciatica.
Long, weary nights spent at the bedside of patients or in tiresome railway journeys, and exposure to all varieties of weather, had a serious effect upon him. Travelling was slow, according to modern ideas, and long waits at wayside stations in winter-time helped to play havoc with his constitution. He was well known to the railway officials in Scotland. The figure of the great Edinburgh professor was familiar at many a station, striding up and down the platform with the stationmaster, chaffing the porter, or cheerily chatting to the driver and stoker leaning out of the engine. After his death many of these men would proudly produce little mementoes of their services to him, which he never forgot to send.
The little rest house, Viewbank, on the Forth, had to be more frequently sought refuge in, if only to get away from the harassing night-bell and secure a full night’s sleep. In the last year or two of his existence212he found the work of his practice and chair hard to carry on, not because of any defined illness, but on account of the loss of that buoyant elasticity of constitution which had enabled him to bear without apparent effort or injury the fatigue which would have been sufficient to prostrate more than one ordinary man. He had early trained himself to do with a minimum of sleep; to snatch what he could and when he could, if it were only on a sofa, a bare board, or in one of the comfortless railway carriages of the day. He took full advantage during his career of the modern facilities for travelling which he had seen introduced and developed. Many a night was spent in the train, going to or returning from a far-distant patient, or after a combined professional and archæological excursion; the next morning would find him busy in his usual routine. On the day after receiving the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford in 1866, he started for Devizes, which was reached the same evening; here he had a hasty meal and drove on to Avebury to see the standing stones there. He returned at midnight, and at five o’clock next morning set off for Stonehenge, a place he had long desired to see, thoroughly examined the remarkable remains, and on his return took train to Bath, where he found time to examine more antiquities. At midnight a telegram reached him calling him professionally to Northumberland. He snatched a few hours’ sleep, and taking the four a.m. train to London set out for Northumberland, where he saw his patient,213and then proceeded to Edinburgh. This is no solitary instance of his journeyings, but an example of many.
When the year 1870 had been entered upon, he awoke to the fact that his flesh was too weak for his eager spirit; despite this, he held on his course, and worked without ceasing, never refusing an urgent call, although he now suffered from angina pectoris. On February 12th he hastened to London to give evidence in a notorious divorce case. He arrived only to find that the trial had been postponed for four days. He returned to Edinburgh on the 14th, spent the next day in professional visits in the country, and arrived again in London in time to appear in the witness-box on the 16th, although chilled to the bone by the coldness of the long journey. On the following day he stopped at York on his way home, dined with Lord Houghton, and visited, at 11 p.m., his friend Dr. Williams, in Micklegate. During the remainder of the journey from York to Edinburgh he suffered severely, and “was glad to rest for awhile upon the floor of the railway carriage.”
A few days after this last run to London he was summoned to see a patient in Perth, but was this time so fatigued by the effort, that after his return on February 25th he was obliged to take to bed. The news sped to all quarters of the globe that Simpson was gravely ill, for nothing but grave illness could compel that vigorous man to completely lay down his work.
His symptoms improved at first under appropriate214treatment sufficiently to allow him to be placed on a bed in the drawing-room; and he even once more took up his favourite archæology, revising some of his work in that subject. Patients also were not to be denied; many were seen and prescribed for in his sick room, some even being carried up to his presence. But the fatal disease regained ascendancy, and the fact became apparent to all, not excepting himself, that the last chapter of the closely written book of his life had been entered upon. Towards the end of March, by his own request, his eldest surviving son was telegraphed for to be near him, and he wrote a touching letter to his youngest son, then a student in Geneva, encouraging him in his studies, asking him to look for cup-markings cut in the curious islet rock in Lake Geneva, and ending with an expression of his feeling of impending death, for which he felt perfectly and happily prepared. In these last days he loved to have his nearest and dearest around him; Lady Simpson and others read to him, and his daughter tells us how she daily prepared her school lessons in the sick room with his help; to the last he interested himself in the work of his relations and friends. He answered the attack of Bigelow, of Boston, conscious that it was his last effort on behalf of chloroform, and wrote to all his old opponents asking their forgiveness if at any time words of his had wounded their feelings. He might well have spared himself the regrets—such as they were—which troubled him. “I would have215liked to have completed hospitalism,” he said, “but I hope some good man will take it up.” On another occasion he asked, “How old am I? Fifty-nine? Well, I have done some work. I wish I had been busier.”
He expressed a desire that his nephew should succeed him in the Chair of Midwifery—he would, he thought, help to perpetuate his treatment.
There was much communing with himself on his future, and all his sayings on the subject breathed the simple faith first inculcated in him in the Bathgate cottage. His great sufferings, sometimes allayed by opiates and his own chloroform, were bravely borne, but the days dragged sadly on. On the evening of May 5th Sandy took his place at his side, and the last conscious moments of the great physician were spent with his head in the arms of him who had helped and guided him through the difficult days of his career. At sunset on May 6th he passed peacefully away.
The extent of the feeling evoked by the tidings of his death was represented in Mr. Gladstone’s remark that it was a grievous loss to the nation and was truly a national concern. There was a universally expressed opinion that he merited without a shadow of doubt the rare national honour of public interment in Westminster Abbey. A committee was formed out of the leading medical men in London to carry out this suggestion. Their task was light, for the Dean acceded to the request at once. Much as his216family and the Scots people valued this tribute to his greatness, they decided otherwise. Scotland has no counterpart of Westminster in which to lay to rest those whom she feels to have been her greatest; but Edinburgh felt that she could not part with him who in life had been her possession and her pride. He had long ago chosen a piece of ground in the Warriston cemetery, and Lady Simpson decided, to the gratification of his fellow-citizens, that he should be buried there beside the five children who had preceded him. His resting place was well chosen; it nestled into the side of the beautiful city, and from it could be viewed some of the chief objects of the scene he knew so well—on the south the stately rock crowned with the ancient castle, and the towering flats of the old town stretching away to Arthur’s Seat; on the north the long stretch of the Firth of Forth and in the distance on the one hand the Ochills; on the other the Bass Rock.
The funeral was one of the most remarkable ever witnessed in Scotland. It took place on May 13th in the presence of a crowd estimated to consist of thirty thousand persons. The hearse was followed by a representative procession comprising close upon two thousand persons. His own relatives assembled at 52, Queen Street, the general public and the Town Council in the Free Church of St. Luke, and the representatives of the University, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Royal Society and217many other public bodies, in the Hall of the College of Physicians. At each of these meeting-places religious services were held. The whole city ceased to labour that afternoon in order to pay the last tribute to its dearly loved professor. The poor mourned in the crowd as deeply and genuinely as those with whom he had been closely associated in life mourned as they followed his remains in the procession. Every mourner grieved from a sense of personal loss, so deeply had his influence sunk down into the hearts of the people.
The companion of his troubles and his triumphs, who had bravely joined him to help him to the fame he strove after, was soon laid beside him. Lady Simpson died on June 17th of the same year.
But two notes were struck in the countless obituary notices and letters of condolence which appeared from far and near—those of appreciation of his great nature, and sorrow for the terrible loss sustained by science and humanity. The Queen caused the Duke of Argyle to express to the family her own personal sorrow at the loss of “so great and good a man.” A largely attended meeting was held in Washington to express the feeling of his own profession in the United States, at which Dr. Storer moved, “that in Dr. Simpson, American physicians recognise not merely an eminent and learned Scots practitioner, but a philanthropist whose love encircled the world; a discoverer who sought and found for suffering218humanity in its sorest need a foretaste of the peace of heaven, and a devoted disciple of the only true physician, our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
The following original verses from the pen of a well-known scholar in the profession, were given prominence in the columns of theLancet:—
(Our lamented Sir James Simpson was the subject of angina pectoris.)