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DISCOVERY 



pation, Sinipiuii (K'ti-nnincd to CMilarge his experience 

 by a visit to the chief seats of medical learning in 

 Europe, and for this purpose he paid visits to Paris, 

 Brussels, and Liege, taking London and Oxford on the 

 way. On his return, in November 1X35. he was elected 

 President of the Royal Medical Society in Edinburgh, 

 and chose a subject for his address connected with 

 obstetrics. He next accepted the post of house- 

 surgeon in the Lying-in Hospital, and at the same 

 time, owing to Professor Thomson's ill-health, gave the 

 lectures on Pathology at the University. In 1837 he 

 obtained the post of Extra-academic Lecturer on Mid- 

 wifery, and two vears later, on the retirement of the 



SIR JAMES YOUNG SIMPSON. 



Professor of Obstetrics in the Lfniversity, this ambitious 

 youth of twenty-eight applied for the vacant chair. 

 After a great fight and the expenditure of much more 

 money on canvassing than he could afford, he was 

 elected by one vote by the Town Council in whose gift 

 the chair lay. He even became engaged to Miss 

 Grindley, of Liverpool, and married her during this 

 anxious period of trial, for he thought that his youth 

 and single state might prejudice his chances of election. 

 On the evening of the day of his success he wrote to 

 his father-in-law: " I was this day elected Professor. 

 My opponent had sixteen and I had seventeen votes. 

 All the political influence of both the leading Whigs 



and Tories here was employed against me ; but never 

 mind, I have got the chair in despite of them, Professors 

 and all. Jessie's honej-moon and mine is to commence 

 to-morrow." 



From that time forth his reputation as a lecturer 

 and an authority on the diseases of women increased, 

 and his means became more affluent, so that he was 

 able gratefully to pay off his debts to his father-in- 

 law and his own family. 



In his student days, the horrors of the operating- 

 table were such as to defy description and exaggera- 

 tion. On a sensitive youth such as Simpson, it w£is 

 but natural that such a condition of things should 

 have evolved feelings of disgust and a strong desire to 

 alleviate the terrible sufferings, mental and physical, 

 which the patients of those days had to bear when 

 they were being operated on. With his customary 

 industry and care, Simpson made a search through the 

 records of antiquity to see what had been used in the 

 past to induce insensibility. Indian hemp, he found, 

 had been used under various names throughout the 

 East for this purpose. Mandrake was another well- 

 known drug (it was mentioned by Shakespeare) possess- 

 ing narcotic properties. Methods of another kind had 

 been tried, such as hypnotism ; operations had actu- 

 ally been performed on hypnotised persons as recently 

 as 1837. Ii^ 1800 Sir Humphrey Davy had discovered 

 that laughing gas, an oxide of nitrogen, could produce 

 a pleasant sensation of intoxication, and suggested its 

 suitability for use in minor operations. Some thirty 

 years later Faraday discovered that if ether were in- 

 haled it had very much the same effect, but it was left 

 to the Americans, Wells and Morton, to induce com- 

 ])lete anaesthesia, and adapt the earlier experiments to 

 practical ends. Wells was the first to have a tooth 

 extracted under the influence of laughing gas (1844), 

 and two years later Morton, who had not been so 

 successful with laughing gas, found that ether would 

 much more easily produce the same effect. He 

 actually anaesthetised himself by inhaling this substance 

 on his handkerchief. 



Early in 1847, the year in which he was appointed 

 Physician Accoucheur to Queen Mctoria in Scotland. 

 Simpson, still a j'oung man, began to use ether syste- 

 matically in his large obstetric practice, thus gaining for 

 the Edinburgh Medical School the honour of being the 

 first place where use was made of the new means of 

 alleviating suffering. He was not, however, entirely 

 satisfied that the best substance had been discovered for 

 this purpose, and he set about searching for the ideal 

 drug that would produce the effects that had already 

 been produced by ether and laughing gas. This work 

 was done in the evenings at his house in Queen Street, 

 a house which had already attained fame as the 

 resort of anyone of importance who happened to be 



