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His versatility—The Lycium of the Muses—The
Catstane—Was the Roman Army provided with medical
officers?—Weems—His lack of business method—Fees and no fees—Generosity
often imposed upon—His unusual method of conducting private practice—The
ten-pound note—Simpson and the hotel proprietors.
PROFESSOR SIMPSON'S versatility was remarkable.
He turned from one subject to another and displayed a mastery over each; it
was not merely the knowledge of principles which astonished but the intimate
familiarity with details. He was able to discuss almost any subject in
literature, science, politics, or theology with its leading exponent on
equal terms. He had the power of patient listening as well as the gift of
speech ; more than that he had the ability to charm speech from others, of
making each man reveal his inmost thoughts, betray his most cherished
theories, or narrate his most stirring experiences; the most reticent man
would not realise until he had left Simpson's presence, that in a brief
interview, perhaps the first, he had told his greatest adventures, or laid
bare his wildest aspirations before this student of mankind who was
summarising his life and character as he spoke. Simpson built up his
knowledge not so much from books as by the exercise of his highly developed
faculty of observation aided by his memory. He enjoyed the study of his
fellow-men and extracted all that was worth knowing from those with whom he
came into contact. He never undertook work without a definite object in
view, and rarely abandoned his task before that object was accomplished.
Quite small researches would lead to considerable and unexpected labour. He
preserved his scientific method, his desire to appeal only to the evidence
of facts—not to other men's fancies—through his archaeological work as well
as in more professional lines of study. He laboured long and carefully over
such an object as the study of old skulls dug up in antiquarian excursions;
setting before himself the object of finding out by the condition and wear
of the teeth what kind of food had been consumed by the owners, probably
primeval inhabitants of some district. He impressed his methods upon those
who worked for him or with him. We find him writing to his nephew, who was
about to visit Egypt, telling him when there to gather information as to the
suitability of the country for invalids, and directing him how to employ his
leisure in furthering this object. He was to study German on the voyage
thither, and to take with him as models Clarke's book on Climate and
Mitchell's on Algiers, and any French or German books on the subject he
might hear of. He would require to collect (1) The average daily temperature
; (2) The hygrometric and barometric states daily; (3) The temperature of
the Nile; (4) The temperature of any mineral springs; (5) The general
character of the geology; (6) The genera- character of the botany of the
country. He asked him to inquire specially as to the effect of the climate
on consumption, and pointed out that Pliny described Egypt seventeen
centuries ago as the best climate for phthisical patients. For amusement he
was to take some good general book on Egypt and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The
serious study of a succession of inquirers was to be the young man's holiday
amusement !
Simpson's most notable contributions to
archaeology were made when his time was most occupied professionally. The
researches on Leprosy were first enlarged and improved. In 1852, when in the
British Museum, his eye was attracted by a small leaden vase bearing a Greek
inscription signifying the Lycium of the Muses. By a painstaking inquiry he
established that this lycium was the Lykion indikon of Dioscorides, a drug
used by ancient Greeks as an application to the eyes in various kinds of
ophthalmia. It was obtained from India, and is still used for these purposes
in that country. He discovered that there were three other 154 examples of
this ancient receptable for the valued eye-medicine in modern museums.
He had correspondents in different parts of
Scotland engaged in making researches into antiquities, which he encouraged
and directed. Among such were inquiries into the whereabouts of a church
said to possess holy earth brought from Rome ; and a hunt for ancient
cupping-vessels. The work on the Cat-stane of Kirkliston was elaborate, and
a perfect example of his method. Probably this stone, a massive unhewn block
of greenstone-trap, had been a familiar object to him in his youth, for it
lay alone in a field close to the Linlithgow road. In his monograph he
endeavoured to show by close reasoning, with profuse references to forgotten
authorities and ancient history, that the stone was the tomb of one Vetta,
the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa. His argument ran as follows : The
surname Vetta, which figured on the inscription carved upon the stone, was
the name of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, as given by the oldest
genealogists, who described him as the son of Victa. The inscription ran
thus : VETTA F(ilius) VICTI. Vetta was an uncommon Saxon name, and no other
Vetta, son of Victa, was known in history. Two generations before Hengist
and Horsa arrived in England a Saxon host was leagued with the Picts, Scots,
and Attacots in fighting a Roman army, and these Saxons were probably
commanded by an ancestor of Hengist and Horsa. The battlefield was situated
between the two Roman wails, and consequently included the tract where the
stone is now placed. The palaeographic characters of the inscription
indicated that it was carved about the end of the fourth century. Latin
(with a very few exceptions in Greek) was the only language known to have
been used at that time by Romanised Britons and foreign conquerors for the
purpose of inscriptions. The occasional erection of monuments to Saxon
leaders is proved by the fact mentioned by Bede that in his time, the eighth
century, there stood in Kent a monument commemorating the death of Horsa. In
1659 a writer had described this tomb of Horsa as having been destroyed by
"storms and tempests under the conduct of time."
In 1861 Simpson was president of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, and delivered an address on the past and present
work of archaeology which greatly stimulated antiquarian study in his
country. Amongst the honours which his antiquarian achievements brought upon
him was that of being appointed Professor of Antiquities to the Royal
Academy of Scotland ; he was also elected a member of the Archaeological
Societies of Athens, Nassau, and Copenhagen.
He make researches into the subjects of lake
dwellings, . primeval pottery, and burial urns. One of his most valuable
writings was upon the subject, "Was the Roman Army provided with Medical
Officers?" He answered the question in the affirmative after a laborious
hunt amongst votive and mortuary tablets ; no Roman historians had left
clear indications of the existence of any army medical department. He found
that several tablets were preserved bearing inscriptions referring to army
surgeons, which suggested that although they were all known as medicus there
were degrees of rank amongst them, notably the medicus legionis and the medicus
cohort is. There is a well-preserved tablet in the Newcastle Museum found in
that neighbourhood, commemorating a surgeon of the first Tungrian cohort,
and one in Dresden, referring to a medicus duplicatorius, a term which
indicates that the surgeon had been fortunate enough by his attainments to
merit, and, we hope, receive double fees for his services.
All his antiquarian study was looked upon by
Simpson himself as no more than a relaxation. Fatigued by days and nights of
anxious consecutive professional work, he would suddenly dash off for a day
into some part of the country where he knew there was a likely "find,"
leaving patients and students to the care of his assistants. Here he would
press into service and infect with his spirit all sorts of local worthies
from the squire or laird down to the labourer, who woke up at his
stimulation to find that what had been of no concern to them and their
fathers before them—perhaps objects of vituperation or superstitious
dread—were objects of keen delight and interest, and actually valuable to
this astonishing man. Once on a professional visit to Fifeshire he quite
casually discovered some remarkable though rough carvings in caves,
representing various animals and curious emblems, and he was able to show
that they presented features hitherto unnoticed. Fifeshire was famous for
its underground dwellings, or, as they are locally called, "weems"—a term
which gave origin to the title of the Earldom of Wemyss. After such an
excursion he would return to Queen Street full of boyish spirits, eager to
narrate his discoveries to interested friends, and refreshed ready to resume
the daily round of work. Archaeology was his hobby—the hobby on which he
rode away for refreshment and relief from the monotony of his life's work ;
not only did the hobby constantly restore his flagging energies, but as it
is given to few men to do, he put new life into his hobby whenever he
bestrode it.
In the conduct of his practice he was somewhat
negligent. He was one of the old school in these matters; he trusted his
head rather than paper, and his head had had such a careful self-imposed
training since childhood that it was a good servant. But where the brain has
such enormous duties to perform, those which appear to it unimportant must
of necessity be comparatively neglected.
Had he been more careful of pounds, shillings,
and pence, he would have been more attentive to the details of practice. To
Simpson, provided he had sufficient money for all his wants—and his wants
were wide, for they included those of many others —pecuniary and business
matters were of secondary consideration. In his student days he had lived
carefully, accounting, as has been seen, for every trivial expenditure to
those to whom he was indebted. But now he was free from the harassing
necessity of exercising rigid economy, he cast aside the drudgery of
business methods and disdained commercial considerations. He certainly
received some very large fees, but the curious mixture of human beings who
crowded his waiting-rooms were treated all alike whether they paid princely
fees or no fee at all ; lots were drawn daily for precedence, and they
entered his presence according as they drew. His valet seems to have
attained considerable skill in estimating the probable remunerative value of
a roomful of waiting patients, and would grumble at night if on emptying the
professor's pockets, as was his duty, the result fell short of his
calculated anticipations. The man did not approve of the master's habit of
giving gratuitous service. There were many who were never asked for a fee,
and many others whose proffered guineas were refused. Simpson would not ask
for money from those to whom he thought it was a struggle to pay him; the
magnitude of his profit-yielding practice rendered this form of charity
possible for him; from the really poor he always refused remuneration. His
house was filled with all sorts of presents from patients, grateful for
benefit conferred, grateful for generosity and consideration. He was also a
free giver, and besides supporting orthodox charities made many gifts of
goodly sums to persons who appeared to him to be in want, or who succeeded
in impressing on him their need for help* He was imposed upon often enough ;
not seldom by pseudo-scientists full of some great discovery which a little
more capital might enable them to complete. Once he corresponded with an
enthusiast of this description who confessed that he had been breakfasting
on a waistcoat, dining on a shirt, and supping , on a pair of tough old
leather boots, with the object of finding a solid substance, which combined
with lead or tin would form gold—nothing more or less than the time-honoured
philosopher's stone ! To such a man Simpson gave freely not only once.,
To young students entering upon professional
life with no other capital than their newly acquired qualifications to
practice, he was ever generous. The Scots Universities sent forth many such
youths, sturdy and independent, and with feelings that would be easily
wounded by any attempt to patronise. But his gentleness, and the sympathy
born of his own early experiences and shining in his eyes, made help from
him something to be proud of.
It could never be urged against Simpson that he
was avaricious. Just as when honours were showered upon him he accepted them
with less thought of the personal honour than of the appreciation of his
friends and the public, and rejoiced that they were pleased; so he rejoiced
in the acquisition of ample means chiefly because of the pleasure he might
derive therefrom by helping others.
His method of seeing patients was boldly
haphazard ; we learn with astonishment that he kept no list of his visits to
be made, and started a day's round with only his prodigious memory to guide
him as to where he should go. Such a method must have had the result that
only cases of interest or urgency were seen. No doubt the able staff" of
assistants attended to the others, but these comprised not only sufferers
from trivial complaints but those afflicted with imaginary ills who had come
to see Simpson, not his assistant. Possibly they had already suffered many
things of many physicians and were none the better. Such persons blamed
Simpson with some reason. In the case of neurotic persons only was his
method not reprehensible ; continued attendance might have undone the
benefit of the one application, if we may so term it, of his strong
personality, which sometimes was all that was required, so superstitious was
the reverence for his powers. A precise system of registration of
engagements and visits ought certainly to have been adopted. We can
sympathise with those who felt aggrieved that they could not obtain more
attention from the great man, but it must be remembered that by his own
method he saw a great number of difficult and dangerous cases, and was able
to originate out of his wide and unprecedented experience, modes of
treatment which are to-day valued highly and successfully made use of by his
professional successors. He never wittingly left a fellow-creature's life in
danger, but would hasten at all hours to cases of real urgency.
As is usual where large numbers are striving
after the same object some were highly careless in their communications with
him. Fees were sent to him with a request for a receipt, but no address was
given. Engagements were asked for by persons who neglected to say at what
hotel they were staying; and others worried him for letters on quite trivial
subjects. On one occasion, it is authentically related, a ten-pound note was
forwarded to him by a man who might more reasonably have paid one hundred
pounds. The note was somewhat carelessly not acknowledged, and the sender
kept writing letters demanding an answer in increasing severity of tone. But
he was left to rage in vain. A few nights later Simpson's sleep was
disturbed by a rattling window; in the dark he rose and groped for a piece
of paper wherewith to stuff the chink and stop the irritating noise. His
only comment next morning when his wife, having removed the paper and
discovered its nature came to him with it, was, "Oh! it's that ten pounds! "
There was a great want of method in all his
arrangements, and Dr. Duns confesses to having had considerable difficulty
in arranging Simpson's letters and papers, so carelessly were they kept.
The leading hotels in the city benefited by
Simpson's reputation. Patients and pilgrims filled their rooms long before
tourists began to crowd Scotland as they do to-day. When Simpson was elected
to the Chair of Midwifery loud complaints were uttered by the hotel
proprietors. His predecessor, Professor Hamilton, had been a man of such
wide reputation that they derived much profit from the patients sent in from
the surrounding country to be attended by him. How could a young man like
Simpson equal this ? And yet when he died there was more than one hotel
proprietor who could attribute no small measure of his own success to the
patients and visitors who crowded not only from the country districts of
Scotland but from the most remote parts of the British Empire, as well as
from the great cities of Europe and America, to gain help or speech from or
perhaps only to see this same Simpson. And his fame had reached the high
point it ever after maintained when he was but a young man—before he was
forty years of age. It was estimated that no less than eighty thousand
pounds per annum was lost to the hotel, lodging, and boarding-house keepers
of Edinburgh when he died. |
