Edinburgh medicine of seventy years ago.

Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Edinburgh medicine of seventy years ago. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    energy in practice, of fertile resource in new discoveries, and of cultivated knowledge regarding the past history of his pro¬ fession. Simpson made a wide and lasting reputation in many fields. As an illustration of the popularity which attracted to him a practice almost unsought, we may quote a descrip¬ tion which his colleague, Sir Robert Christison, gives of a call made by him on Simpson with reference to a business matter (an intended exploitation for commercial purposes of the newly discovered “ paraffin ”). Christison writes : “ Simpson was at this period in the full swing of his marvellous practice. When I called on him, his two reception-rooms were, as usual, full of patients, more were seated in the lobby, female faces stared from all the windows in vacant expectation, and a lady was ringing the door-bell. But the Doctor brushed through the crowd to join me, and left them all kicking their heels at their leisure for the next two hours. ...” At the time of which we write, Simpson had been five years incumbent of the Mid- wifery Chair, and was busily engaged in the search after an anaesthetic suited for obstetric use, which he gave to the world as chloroform Uvo years later, in 1847. We may transcribe his own account of the steps in the discovery of antesthetics, for which a great deal of the credit belongs to Edinburgh, and which, side by side with Lister’s antiseptic principles, has revo¬ lutionized surgical practice: Perforator and Cranioclast intro¬ duced by Sir J. Y. Simpson. (From “ Clinical Lectures on Dis¬ eases of Women.”) “ If we try to put into a summarized form the data which we have been discussing regarding the introduction of anaesthesia in America and this country, it appears to me that we might correctly state the whole matter as follows: