SIMPSON 



5389 



SINCLAIR 



coast. He sent out numerous exploring expedi- 

 tions, and himself led several. He was knighted 

 in 1841, and in the same year started on a jour- 

 ney around the world, which he described in 

 A Narrative of a Journey Round the World in 

 the Years 1841 and 1842. 



SIMPSON, SIR JAMES YOUNG (1811-1870), a 

 distinguished Scotch physician, the discoverer 

 of the anesthetic qualities of chloroform. He 

 was bora at Bathgate and educated at the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh, from which he received 

 the M. D. degree in 1832. In 1840 he became 

 professor of medicine and midwifery in the uni- 

 versity, and seven years later was appointed 

 physician to the queen of England. In that 

 same year he announced his important discov- 

 ery, and his advocacy of the use of chloroform 

 in childbirth gave rise to heated and wide- 

 spread discussion. Simpson was also the in- 

 ventor of a means of arresting loss of blood in 

 hemorrhage. For his great service to his pro- 

 fession he received various honors and in 1866 

 was created a baronet. He was given a public 

 funeral, and a maternity hospital was founded 

 in Edinburgh in his honor. See ANESTHETIC ; 

 CHLOROFORM. 



SIMS, WILLIAM SOWDEN (1858- ), an 

 American vice-admiral who commanded the 

 American naval forces in European waters after 

 the United States joined the allies in the War 

 of the Nations. He was born at Port Hope, 

 Canada, but was 

 educated in the 

 United States. 

 He entered the 

 Naval Academy 

 at Annapolis, was 

 graduated in 1880, 

 and then rose 

 steadily in the 

 service, attaining 

 the rank of vice- 

 admiral in 1917. 

 From 1897 to 1900 

 he was naval at- 

 tache to the 

 American embas- 

 sies at Paris and 

 Petrograd (Saint 

 Petersburg), after which he was appointed 

 fleet intelligence officer and inspector of target 

 practice for the Asiatic squadron. In this ca- 

 pacity he reported to President Roosevelt a 

 new system of target practice for the navy 

 gunners. The President ordered him home and 

 had the system adopted, and between 1902 and 



VICE-ADMIRAL SIMS 

 The foremost American na- 

 val commander in the War of 

 the Nations. 



1909 Sims was inspector of target practice at 

 the Bureau of Navigation. He was thus in- 

 strumental in vastly improving American gun- 

 nery practice. 



Between 1909 and 1911 he was commander of 

 the Minnesota, for the next two years was a 

 member of the Naval War College, and in 1913 

 was appointed to the command of the Atlantic 

 torpedo flotilla. The entrance of America into 

 the European war brought further responsibili- 

 ties. His promotion to the rank of vice- 

 admiral, ordered by President Wilson in 1917, 

 gave him an equal standing with the British 

 and French naval commanders, and during an 

 interval in which the commanding British offi- 

 cer on the coast of Ireland was absent Admiral 

 Sims held chief command of the allied fleet in 

 the Irish Sea. 



SINAI, si'ni', or si'nai, the mountain, 

 called also in Scripture Horeb, on which Moses 

 received the law. It is supposed to be one of 

 the three peaks of the mountain range on the 

 peninsula of Sinai, which lies between the two 

 arms of the Red Sea the gulfs of Suez and 

 Akabah. The Children of Israel camped on 

 the plain before Sinai while Moses remained 

 forty days upon the Mount; at the end of this 

 period he returned with the Ten Command- 

 ments written on tables of stone. Sinai is 

 often used figuratively in literature to symbol- 

 ize the legal side of God's dealing with men, 

 as Olivet and Galilee represent the milder as- 

 pects of forgiveness and grace. 



SINCLAIR, UPTON [BEALL] (1878- ), an 

 American writer and prominent advocate of 

 socialism, was born at Baltimore, Md. He was 

 graduated from the College of the City of 

 New York in 1897, then spent four years in 

 postgraduate work at Columbia University. 

 Sinclair became widely known in 1906 as the 

 author of a novel called The Jungle, which ex- 

 posed conditions then existing in the Chicago 

 stockyards. As the result of his agitation an 

 investigation was ordered by President Roose- 

 velt, and improvement followed. Sinclair is 

 an advocate of cooperative housekeeping, and 

 he founded a colony on that basis in 1906, near 

 Englewood, N. J. As the building burned 

 down in 1907, the experiment could not be 

 fully worked out. He also was one of the 

 founders of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. 

 In 1917 he withdrew from the Socialist party 

 because of the opposition of that party to 

 American participation in the War of the Na- 

 tions. His writings include Springtime and 

 Harvest, The Money-Changers, Sylvia, The 



