History of the Chair of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children in the University of Edinburgh : an introductory lecture / by Alexander Russell Simpson.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the Chair of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children in the University of Edinburgh : an introductory lecture / by Alexander Russell Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    for practice to an examination in midwifery as well as in cliemistry and anatomy, not to say medicine and surgery. Yet it wa.s foi- this that the Hamiltons had to contend. In 1815 James Hamil- ton made his first attempt to be admitted as a member of the Medical Faculty, and not till fifteen years later was lie accorded a place where common sense would have put him at the first. Long after the Professor had obtained a seat in the Facultv and had acquired a right to examine students on the subjects which he taught, he had to furnish them with a separate diploma or license in midwifery distinct from the graduation diploma. He was an enthusiast in his work, and we can believe it true wliat is said regarding him: To an intimate knowledge of his subject was added an animated, agreeable, and interesting mode of impart- ing that knowledge to others, qualities which combined to render him perhaps the most attractive and successful professor of his day. He died November 14th, 1839, full of years and honour; and the subject being by this time taught as a regular part of the winter course, the class was conducted for that session by his favourite pupil Dr Moir, whom three successive occupants of the chair have had the happiness to count among their choicest friends. In setting before you such presentment as I have been able to make of these earlier Professors of Midwifery, it has needed the light of historical research to call them up from the darkness of the past, for the name even of the latest and greatest of them has fallen from the pages of our midwifery textbooks, and is all un- known to modern gynecology. There remains but to mention one more name, which shines in its own light, and will be luminous for ever. When James Hamilton was growing old, new times were passing over every sphere of thought and action, stirring every science to new research and every art to new achievement. In no department of medicine was there a more distinct transition from an old era to a new than in that which the patrons in 1840 appointed James Young Simpson to profess; and of the many men who took their part in shaping the features of the modern time no one had a larger or worthier share than he. In Midwifery good work had but recently been done, notably by Naegele and his compatriots, in developing the science Simpson assimilated the new doctrines, and knew how to enforce, extend, and illustrate them. In all the operative procedures that the exigencies of midwifery demand he found much to improve, and on many of them he effected changes of abiding value, so that some of the most frequently employed instruments and forms of instrument are called by his name. Above all, he made the epoch memoi-able by robbing the lying-in room of its anguish, through the introduction, first of ether, which the surgeons were already using, and then of chlorofonn, the anaisthetic powers of which he was the first to prove and promulgate. As for Gynecology, an entire transformation had to be accom-