of Edinburgh , Session 1870-71. 257 
asked by me for any notices of his deceased friend, wrote as 
follows :— 
“My own success in practice has been far beyond anything I ever antici¬ 
pated when I commenced it, now upwards of a quarter of a century since 
and, beyond all question, I feel indebted to Simpson, more than to all my 
other teachers put together. He was loveable and winning to an extent 
which no words of mine can express. I spent the forenoon of the day on 
which he returned from the Mordaunt trial with him. Then he performed 
upon a patient of my own, a difficult operation, on which he showed great 
resource and skill, probably the last operation of importance he did. He 
gave me an account of the trial, and of Serjeant Ballantyne’s examination. 
He inquired most anxiously about Dr Watson’s lecture given the previous 
night at the Royal College of Surgeons,* at which I was present, and at his 
absence from which he expressed great regret. A part of the day on which 
he died, I spent with Dr Warburton Begbie; and when he told me that I 
would never see Simpson again, adding ‘ I know full well how genuine has 
been your mutual friendship for many long years,’ I could give no reply. 
The tears stole down my cheeks, and I experienced then, and many a time 
since, a genuine sorrow which I need not describe. To his faults I was not 
blind, and for them he has assuredly been sufficiently abused by those who 
think that he only was blameworthy. While I live, I shall never cease to 
think of him, as I always found him, generous, attractive, and loveable, far 
beyond any other man whom I ever met.” 
Let me add, that he did not confine his teachings and coun¬ 
sel to students and to medical practitioners. To all and sundry 
who chose to consult him, and who could obtain access to 
him, he was ever ready to open up the stores of his wonderful 
memory and inventiveness. On the last occasion that I had a 
lengthened conversation with him, he adverted to the future pros¬ 
pects of medical discovery, and pointed out that these would 
depend more on the chemists than on any other class of inves¬ 
tigators. He remarked, how little we yet knew the reasons 
why particular medicines were efficacious in arresting disease, and 
said that he thought no medical student should receive a licence 
who was not an expert chemist. 
Whilst ready to teach verbally, whether in the University, or in 
medical societies, or in his own house, he had little taste for writing 
medical books, but it was a recreation to him to write on arch geologi¬ 
cal subjects. The two large volumes on obstetrics, which bear his 
name, were published, not by him, but by two medical friends, who 
undertook the labour of collecting and arranging his papers and 
* The subject of lecture was Hospital Reform. 
