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Poetical instincts—Religious views—Religious and
emotional influences in his life—Doubts—Revivalism—Health—Overwork tells—Bed
—Gradual failure—Death on May 6, 1870—Grave offered in Westminster Abboy—Buried
at Warriston—Obituary notices— Bust in the Abbey—His greatness.
THE emotional part of Sir James Simpson's nature
found some small expression in versifying both, as we have seen, in early
years and in later days. We know that he was a close student of Shakspeare,
but Miss Simpson states that her father probably never entered a theatre, so
that he can never have seen a representation. He was familiar with modern
poets, especially with Burns. It is related that he once tested a lady
friend's insight into the vernacular by quoting from memory for explanation
the following lines from the national bard :—
Baudrons sit by the ingle-neuk,
An' wi' her loof her face she's washin',
Willie's wife is nae sae trig,
She dichts her grunzie wi' a hooschen.
His own verses were neither better nor worse
than those written by other men whose abilities have led them to excel in
more practical pursuits. In youth they celebrated student life, or were, as
usual, dedicated to Celia's eyebrows; in mature life they were of a more
serious, and latterly of a strong religious description. At all times he
delighted in writing little doggerel verses to his children or friends;
valueless as such efforts are, they served a useful purpose; their
composition was a recreation and pleasant relief to his over-taxed brain,
while it was an amusement to him to watch their effect upon the recipients,
and perhaps to receive a reply clothed also in the garb of rhyme.
Sir James's example so influenced the people
amongst whom he lived that it is impossible to omit reference to his
attitude throughout life towards religion and an account of what is one of
the most interesting phases in his history. Up to Christmas, 1861, he had
been, in the eyes of the religious public, an ordinary citizen ; as regular
in church-going as his professional engagements permitted ; thoroughly
interested in Church affairs, and a strong supporter of his own Church;
possessing to the full the national characteristic of intimate acquaintance
with the letter of the Old and New Testaments; and something of a theologian
as well, as his answer to the religious objections to anaesthesia showed. At
that period, to the delight of many, and the genuine astonishment of others
among his fellow-citizens, he became a leading spirit in the strong
Evangelical movement which was then spreading through the country. "Simpson
is converted," cried the enthusiastic revivalist. w Simpson is converted
now," laughed those who had opposed every action of his. "If Professor
Simpson is converted, it is time some of the rest of us were seeing if we do
not need to be converted," wisely answered one of his friends. In the
ordinary sense of the word Simpson was not converted. Had he passed away
without developing this latter-day Evangelical enthusiasm, all sects would
still have united in thankfulness that such a man had lived. Why this
religious revival during the sixties affected him as it did becomes evident
in looking at the religious, moral, and emotional influences which affected
him throughout his career.
The simple-minded, devout mother, strong in
faith and strong in works, who passed out of his life when he was but nine
years old, left a vivid impression on the boy's mind. In after years he
would call up the picture of the good woman retiring from the shop and the
worries and troubles of daily life into which she had so vigorously thrown
herself and so bravely faced even with failing health, into the quiet little
room behind, to kneel down in prayer ; and would describe how at other times
she went about her work chanting to herself one of the old Scots metrical
psalms:
"Jehovah hear thee in the day, when trouble He
did nend
And let the name of Jacob's God thee from all ill defend.
Let Him remember all thy gifts, accept thy sacrifice,
Grant thee thine heart's wish, and fulfil thy thoughts and counsel wise."
He used to relate one memory of her, touching in
its simplicity: how one day he entered the house with a big hole in his
stocking which she perceived and drew him on to her knee to darn. As she
pulled the repaired garment on she said, "My Jamie, when your mother's away,
you will mind that she was a grand darner." He remembered the words as if
they had been spoken but yesterday, and subsequently offered to a lady who
had established a girls' Industrial School in his native village a prize for
the best darning.
The simple faith which beat in the life of the
Bathgate baker's household was ingrained into James Simpson ; he went forth
into the world full of it, and full of the determination that by his fruits
he should be known.
The tender, loving care for his welfare of his
sisters and brothers, particularly of Sandy, who never faltered in his
inspired belief in James's great future, kept alive in Simpson something of
his mother's affectionate nature, and kindled the sympathies and emotions
which bulked so large in his character. His goodness was displayed in his
kindly treatment of the poor, who formed at first the whole and afterwards
no small part of his patients. When name and fame and bread were his, he did
not turn his back on the poor, but as we have seen, ever placed his skill at
their disposal for no reward, as readily as he yielded it to the greatest in
the land. As in his daily practice, so in his greatest professional efforts,
the revelation of chloroform, the fight for anaesthesia, the introduction of
acupressure, the crusade against hospitalism, one thought breathed through
his work—that he might do something to better the condition of suffering
humanity. He never attempted to keep discoveries in his own hands, to profit
by the monopoly, but scattered wide the knowledge which had come to him that
it might benefit mankind and grow stronger and wider in the hands of other
workers.
In his domestic life he was a tender, loving,
and companionable husband and father, a charming host, and a warm-hearted
friend. "In this Edinburgh of ours," says a recent writer, "there are
familiar feces whose expression changes greatly at the mention of his name;
there are men whose speech from formal and precise turns headlong and
extravagant, as if it came from a new and inspired vocabulary." In Scotland
his personal influence was immense. As was afterwards written of him, "Great
in his art, and peerless in resource, yet greater was he in his own great
soul ; " such a man stood in no need of the violent revolution in mode of
life implied in conversion. A gradual process of development led to his
feeling that although to labour was to pray, there was a need for more
attention to the spiritual, even in his self-sacrificing life.
There is evidence that during a brief period of
his career Simpson became affected by speculative doubts; indeed it would
have been surprising if his mind had not been affected by some of the new
schools of thought which sprang up in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, and
appeared for a time to threaten a mortal antagonism to all that was dear to
orthodox Christians. But these did not influence him long ; true to his
character he examined every new thought and finding it wanting remained firm
in his old and tried faith, and ranged himself on the side of those who
perceived nothing seriously incompatible between religion and modern
science.
In his bearing, when the angel of sorrow
afflicted his household with no unsparing hand, we find him always a
religious-minded man. The first trial was the loss of the eldest child, his
daughter Maggie, in 1844. Another daughter, Mary, was lost in early infancy.
In 1848 his friend of boyhood and student days, Professor John Reid, was
smitten with a painful malady and died after a prolonged period of suffering
during which, knowing that the shadow of death was hanging over him, he
devoted himself in retirement to religious thoughts. Experiences such as
these made Simpson pause and question himself. Brimful of life and vigour,
however much he came in contact with death in his professional rounds, the
sight of it in his own inner circle powerfully stirred his emotional nature.
His friend the Rev. Dr. Duns noticed in him after these sad events a
gradually increasing earnestness in his spiritual life, and a closer inquiry
into the meanings of the Scriptures. He sought out the company, and placed
himself under the influence of those among his patients whom he knew to
possess fervid religious temperaments. The last mental stumbling-block was
the question of prayer; he had seriously doubted in examining the question
intellectually that human prayer could influence the purpose of the Deity.
It is difficult, if not presumptuous, to inquire into the process whereby,
under the guidance of spiritually minded friends, his doubts were satisfied.
" . . . One indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed."
• • • • •
"He fought his doubts and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind,
And laid them—thus he came at length"
* * * * *
"To find a stronger faith his own."
The simple earnest faith of his fathers in which
he had commenced life, ran all through his mature years and prompted his
strong purposeful energies. After the combat with the only seriously
perplexing doubt he re-embraced his faith with the simplicity of a child and
the strength of a giant. For one accustomed to apply to every subject taken
in hand the rigid process of careful scientific investigation, it required
no small effort to lay aside his usual methods and suffer himself to be led
wholly by faith.
It was impossible for Simpson to enter into any
movement without taking a prominent part in it. That Christmas Day on which
all doubts left him was followed by days of extraordinarily zealous work,
such as would have been expected of him after he had convinced himself that
he had a mission to spread abroad this, the latest, and, in his opinion, the
greatest, of his discoveries. He plunged at once into the midst of
Evangelical societies, missions, and prayer-meetings, amongst the upper and
lower classes of Edinburgh, and made excursions into the mining districts of
his native county to deliver addresses. He interested himself in the
education of theological students, and in foreign missions, and added to his
literary work the writing of religious addresses, tracts and hymns. His
example had a powerful influence in Edinburgh. It is said that he frequently
addressed on a Sunday evening Evangelical assemblies of two thousand
persons. The news of his so-called conversion was gleefully spread by
well-meaning folks, who had given credence to statements published by his
enemies, and imagined that here was a bad if a great man turned aside from
the broad to the narrow path. This enthusiastic revival movement died down
in time, and Simpson returned to his ordinary everyday life.
More sorrow soon fell to his lot. In 1862 his
fifth child, James, who had always been an invalid, was taken from him at
the age of fifteen. In 1866 the sad death of Dr. David Simpson, the eldest
son, which has already been referred to, was followed in about a month's
time by that of the eldest surviving daughter, Jessie, at the age of
seventeen. The death of James, a sweet-natured child, stimulated him in the
revival work. Pious friends had surrounded the little sufferer and led him
to add his innocent influence in exciting his father's religious emotions.
There is reason to believe that Simpson
perceived much insincerity in the revival movement, and attempted to
dissociate himself from active participation in it, on account of finding it
impossible to work in harmony with some who, though loud in profession,
flagrantly failed in practice.
The Subject of Simpson's health has been little
referred to in these pages, because throughout his life he paid little
attention to it. The chief remedy for the feeling of indisposition was
change of work. He found it impossible to be idle, and sought as recreation
occupations such as archaeological research, or a scamper round foreign
hospitals, which to most people would have savoured more of labour. The part
of his body which was most worked, his nervous system, was naturally the one
which most often troubled him with disorder; like other great men of high
mental development he suffered from time to time with severe attacks of
megrim, which necessitated a few hours of rest. The blood-poisoning, for
which he availed himself of Professor Syme's services, was soon recovered
from with prompt treatment ending in a foreign tour ; but after it little
illnesses became more frequent, and he was perforce occasionally confined to
the house. During these times he busied himself, for the sake of occupation
and to distract his attention from his sufferings, in professional reading
or the preparation of literary papers. Rheumatic troubles became frequent,
and soon after his eldest son's death he had to run over to the Isle of Man
to free himself from a severe attack of sciatica.
Long, weary nights spent at the bedside of
patients or in tiresome railway journeys, and exposure to all varieties of
weather, had a serious effect upon him. Travelling was slow, according to
modern ideas, and long waits at wayside stations in winter-time helped to
play havoc with his constitution. He was well known to the railway officials
in Scotland. The figure of the great Edinburgh professor was familiar at
many a station, striding up and down the platform with the stationmaster,
chaffing the porter, or cheerily chatting to the driver and stoker leaning
out of the engine. After his death many of these men would proudly produce
little mementoes of their services to him, which he never forgot to send.
The little rest house, Viewbank, on the Forth,
had to be more frequently sought refuge in, if only to get away from the
harassing night-bell and secure a full night's sleep. In the last year or
two of his existence he found the work of his practice and chair hard to
carry on, not because of any defined illness, but on account of the loss of
that buoyant elasticity of constitution which had enabled him to bear
without apparent effort or injury the fatigue which would have been
sufficient to prostrate more than one ordinary man. He had early trained
himself to do with a minimum of sleep ; to snatch what he could and when he
could, if it were only on a sofa, a bare board, or in one of the comfortless
railway carriages of the day. He took full advantage during his career of
the modern facilities for travelling which he had seen introduced and
developed. Many a night was spent in the train, going to or returning from a
far-distant patient, or after a combined professional and archaeological
excursion ; the next morning would find him busy in his usual routine. On
the day after receiving the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford in 1866, he started
for Devizes, which was reached the same evening ; here he had a hasty meal
and drove on to Avebury to see the standing stones there. He returned at
midnight, and at five o'clock next morning set off for Stonehenge, a place
he had long desired to see, thoroughly examined the remarkable remains, and
on his return took train to Bath, where he found time to examine more
antiquities. At midnight a telegram reached him calling him professionally
to Northumberland. He snatched a few hours' sleep, and taking the four a.m.
train to London set out for Northumberland, where he saw his patient, and
then proceeded to Edinburgh. This is no solitary instance of his journeyings,
but an example of many.
When the year 1870 had been entered upon, he
awoke to the fact that his flesh was too weak for his eager spirit ; despite
this, he held on his course, and worked without ceasing, never refusing an
urgent call, although he now suffered from angina pectoris. On February 12th
he hastened to London to give evidence in a notorious divorce case. He
arrived only to find that the trial had been postponed for four days. He
returned to Edinburgh on the 14th, spent the next day in professional visits
in the country, and arrived again in London in time to appear in the
witness-box on the 16th, although chilled to the bone by the coldness of the
long journey. On the following day he stopped at York on his way home,
dined, with Lord Houghton, and visited, at x 1 p.m., his friend Dr.
Williams, in Micklegate. During the remainder of the journey from York to
Edinburgh he suffered severely, and " was glad to rest for awhile upon the
floor of the railway carriage."
A few days after this last run to London he was
summoned to see a patient in Perth, but was this time so fatigued by the
effort, that after his return on February 25th he was obliged to take to
bed. The news sped to all quarters of the globe that Simpson was gravely
ill, for nothing but grave illness could compel that vigorous man to
completely lay down his work.
His symptoms improved at first under appropriate
treatment sufficiently to allow him to be placed on a bed in the
drawing-room; and he even once more took up his favourite archaeology,
revising some of his work in that subject. Patients also were not to be
denied; many were seen and prescribed for in his sick room, some even being
carried up to his presence. But the fatal disease regained ascendancy, and
the fact became apparent to all, not excepting himself, that the last
chapter of the closely written book of his life had been entered upon.
Towards the end of March, by his own request, his eldest surviving son was
telegraphed for to be near him, and he wrote a touching letter to his
youngest son, then a student in Geneva, encouraging him in his studies,
asking him to look for cup-markings cut in the curious islet rock in Lake
Geneva, and ending with an expression of his feeling of impending death, for
which he felt perfectly and happily prepared. In these last days he loved to
have his nearest and dearest around him ; Lady Simpson and others read to
him, and his daughter tells us how she daily prepared her school lessons in
the sick room with his help ; to the last he interested himself in the work
of his relations and friends. He answered the attack of Bigelow, of Boston,
conscious that it was his last effort on behalf of chloroform, and wrote to
all his old opponents asking their forgiveness if at any time words of his
had wounded their feelings. He might well have spared himself the
regrets—such as they were—which troubled him. "I would have liked to have
completed hospitalism," he said, "but I hope some good man will take it up."
On another occasion he asked, "How old am I? Fifty-nine? Well, I have done
some work. I wish I had been busier."
He expressed a desire that his nephew should
succeed him in the Chair of Midwifery—he would, he thought, help to
perpetuate his treatment.
There was much communing with himself on his
future, and all his sayings on the subject breathed the simple faith first
inculcated in him in the Bathgate cottage. His great sufferings, sometimes
allayed by opiates and his own chloroform, were bravely borne, but the days
dragged sadly on. On the evening of May 5th Sandy took his place at his
side, and the last conscious moments of the great physician were spent with
his head in the arms of him who had helped and guided him through the
difficult days of his career. At sunset on May 6th he passed peacefully
away.
The extent of the feeling evoked by the tidings
ot his death was represented in Mr. Gladstone's remark that it was a
grievous loss to the nation and was truly a national concern. There was a
universally expressed opinion that he merited without a shadow of doubt the
rare national honour of public interment in Westminster Abbey. A committee
was formed out of the leading medical men in London to carry out this
suggestion. Their task was light, for the Dean acceded to the request at
once. Much as "his family and the Scots people valued this tribute to his
greatness, they decided otherwise. Scotland has no counterpart of
Westminster in which to lay to rest those whom she feels to have been her
greatest; but Edinburgh felt that she could not part with him who in life
had been her possession and her pride. He had long ago chosen a piece of
ground in the Warriston cemetery, and Lady Simpson decided, to the
gratification of his fellow-citizens, that he should be buried there beside
the five children who had preceded him. His resting place was well chosen ;
it nestled into the side of the beautiful city, and from it could be viewed
some of the chief objects of the scene he knew so well—on the south the
stately rock crowned with the ancient castle, and the towering flats of the
old town stretching away to Arthur's Seat; on the north the long stretch of
the Firth of Forth and in the distance on the one hand the Ochills; on the
other the Bass Rock.
The funeral was one of the most remarkable ever
witnessed in Scotland. It took place on May 13th in the presence of a crowd
estimated to consist of thirty thousand persons. The hearse was followed by
a representative procession comprising close upon two thousand persons. His
own relatives assembled at 52, Queen Street, the general public and the Town
Council in the Free Church of St. Luke, and the representatives of the
University, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Royal Society
and many other public bodies, in the Hall of the College of Physicians. At
each of these meeting-places religious services were held. The whole city
ceased to labour that afternoon in order to pay the last tribute to its
dearly loved professor. The poor mourned in the crowd as deeply and
genuinely as those with whom he had been closely associated in life mourned
as they followed his remains in the procession. Every mourner grieved from a
sense of personal loss, so deeply had his influence sunk down into the
hearts of the people.
The companion of his troubles and his triumphs,
who had bravely joined him to help him to the fame he strove after, was soon
laid beside him. Lady Simpson died on June 17th of the same year.
But two notes were struck in the countless
obituary notices and letters of condolence which appeared from far and near
— those of appreciation of his great nature, and sorrow for the terrible
loss sustained by science and humanity. The Queen caused the Duke of Argyle
to express to the family her own personal sorrow at the loss of "so great
and good a man." A largely attended meeting was held in Washington to
express the feeling of his own profession in the United States, at which Dr.
Storer moved, "that in Dr. Simpson, American physicians recognise not merely
an eminent and learned Scots practitioner, but a philanthropist whose love
encircled the world; a discoverer who sought and found for suffering
humanity in its sorest need a foretaste of the peace of heaven, and a
devoted disciple of the only true physician, our Saviour Jesus Christ."
The following original verses from the pen of a
well-known scholar in the profession, were given prominence in the columns
of the Lancet:—
PROMETHEUS.
(Our lamented Sir James Simpson was the subject of angina pectoris.)
"Alas! alas! pain, pain, ever forever!" So
groaned upon his rock that Titan good Who by his brave and loving hardihood
Was to weak man of priceless boons the giver, Which e'en the supreme tyrant
could not sever From us, once given ; we own him in our food And in our
blazing hearth's beatitude; Yet still his cry was "Pain, ever forever!"
Shall we a later, harder doom rehearse? One came
whose art men's dread of art repressed: Mangled and writhing limb he lulled
to rest, And stingless left the old Semitic curse ; Him, too, for these
blest gifts did Zeus amerce? He, too, had vultures tearing at his breast.
Hush, Pagan plaints! our Titan is unbound; The
cruel beak and talons scared away ; As once upon his mother's lap he lay So
rests his head august on holy ground 5 Spells stronger than his own his
pangs have found ; He hears no clamour of polemic fray, Nor recks he what
unthankful men may say ; Nothing can vex him in that peace profound.
And where his loving soul, his genius bold ? In
slumber ? or already sent abroad On angels' wings and works, as some men
hold? Or waiting Evolution's change, unawed? All is a mystery, as Saint Paul
has told, Saying, " Your life is hid with Christ in God."
In a peaceful corner of the St. Andrew Chapel in
Westminster Abbey, alongside memorials of Sir Humphry Davy and a few other
scientists of note, stands a speaking image in marble—perhaps the most
expressive representation that exists—of this wonderful man,
"To whose genius and benevolence The world owes
the blessings derived From the use of chloroform for The relief of
suffering. Laus Deo."
Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, when writing to the
medical journals in support of the proposal to secure Simpson's burial in
Westminster Abbey, foretold that his reputation would ripen with years, that
jealousies would be forgotten, and antagonism would be buried. Twenty-seven
years have elapsed since then, and few remain with whom he came in conflict;
those who do remain exchanged, along with others of his opponents, friendly
words of reconciliation in the end, and took the hand which he held out from
his deathbed. As a man, Simpson had his faults; but they were exaggerated in
his lifetime by some, just as his capabilities and achievements were
magnified by 219 those who worshipped him as inspired. He was full of
sympathy for mankind, benevolent and honest to a fault, and forbearing to
his enemies. He rushed eagerly into the combat and oftentimes wounded
sorely, and perhaps unnecessarily. His genius was essentially a reforming
genius, and impelled him to fight for his ends, for genius is always the
"master of man." We can forgive him if sometimes it caused him to fight too
vigorously, where the heart of a man of mere talent might have failed and
lost. His special charms were excelled only by his marvellous energy, his
prodigious memory, and his keenness of insight; but he was regrettably
inattentive to the details of ordinary everyday life and practice.
He approached the study of medicine when the
darkness of the Middle Ages was still upon it, and was one of the first to
point out that although many diseases appeared incurable, they were
nevertheless preventable. Although no brilliant operator himself, he so
transformed the surgical theatre by his revelation of the power of
chloroform, and by his powerful advocacy of the use of anaesthetics, that
pain was shut out and vast scientific possibilities opened up ; many of
which have been brilliantly realised by subsequent workers. He devoted
himself specially to the despised obstetric art, fighting for what he
recognised as the most lowly and neglected branch of his profession, ranging
his powerful forces on the side of the weak, and left it the most nearly
perfect of medical sciences.
He was enthusiastic in his belief in progress,
and in the power of steady, honest work to effect great ends. With the
exception of the time of that temporary burst into revivalism in 1861, his
motto throughout life might very well have been laborure est orare. He was
no believer in speculations, but curiously enough kept for recreation only
the subject of archaeology, in which he entered into many intricate
speculative studies. In his professional work he avoided speculation, and
never adopted a theory which was not built upon firm fact.
If we are asked for what we are most to honour
Simpson, we answer, not so much for the discoveries he made, not for the
instruments he invented, not for his exposure of numerous evils, not for the
introduction of reforms, not for any particular contribution to science,
literature, or archaeology; but rather for the inspiring life of the man
looked at both in outline and in detail. He was guided by high ideals, and a
joyous unhesitating belief that all good things were possible—that right
must prevail. He was stimulated by a genius which, as has been pointed out,
gave him the energy to fight for his ends with herculean strength. The fact
that chloroform was by his efforts alone accepted as the anaesthetic, and
ether, which from the first was generally thought to be safer in ordinary
hands, was deliberately put on one side practically all over the world,
testified to his forcible and convincing method, and to his power of making
others see as he saw. As a man of science alone, as a philanthropist alone,
as a worker alone, as a reformer alone, he was great. But although to the
popular mind he is known chiefly because of his introduction of chloroform,
medical history will record him as greater because of his reforming genius,
and will point to the fight for anaesthesia, and his crusade against
hospitalism as the best of all that he accomplished or initiated. And he
who, while making allowances for the weaknesses of human nature which were
Simpson's, studies the life which was brought all too soon to a close, will
recognise the great spirit which breathed through all his life.
The End |
