Sir James Young Simpson

In this celebrity obsessed age of ours, the very notion of ‘fame’ has become so diluted that all of us might one day be famous – if only for fifteen minutes as predicted by the American artist, Andy Warhol in the 1960s. However, the concept of fame amongst our Victorian ancestors was slightly different – for them one achieved ‘fame’ principally either on the field of battle or else in the arena of politics / statesmanship – names familiar to them still resonate with us such as Wellington, Nelson, Disraeli or Gladstone. What chance then for the youngest son from a poor baker’s family living in a small village on the outskirts of Edinburgh to enter the hallowed ranks of those great and good figures? Yet, James Young Simpson, the man of whom I speak today and the bicentenary of whose birth is being commemorated this year both here in Bathgate and also in Edinburgh where he practised for almost his entire professional life was to attain to such a pinnacle of ‘fame’ that he was deemed worthy of a funeral at Westminster Abbey itself! How had this happened?

This James Young Simpson was born in Bathgate on the 7^th of July 1811 in a small baker’s shop-cum-family home in Main Street, The family was already a large one but none too prosperous – indeed, the shop’s takings on the day of the lad’s birth had only amounted to 8/- (40p) ! Still, the birth of the seventh son appeared to herald an upturn in the family’s fortunes and with his mother, Mary, at the helm, the bakery began to prosper. 

The young lad was kept at his books  to which he had a natural affinity and later recalled spending much time in observing the flora and fauna of the Bathgate Hills – an interest he was to carry with him throughout his adult life publishing several papers on the local archaeology of the district.  

So, it was no surprise to find that at the age of fourteen he was sent off to the University of Edinburgh to lodge with another Bathgate bairn’ who was to make good in a similar field to Simpson later in life, John Reid.

Indeed, it was due to the  influence of Reid whom Simpson emulated and admired that led Simpson several years later to abandon his arts classes and enrol as a medical student.  

It is not the place here to go into any detail about his life as a student or his marriage or his becoming the Professor of Pathology at the University in 1840 – one of the youngest professors of his day since these have all been thoroughly documented in various biographies – the publication of a new biography of Simpson is yet another feature to mark the bicentenary of his birth. However, what was to bring Simpson initial fame was his discovery of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.

The search for an effective anaesthetic had been the goal of the medical profession for centuries since the substances being frequently used such as ether or or opium did not grant to the patient or the surgeon sufficient time to allow most surgery to be done – Simpson had seen for himself on many an occasion the horrendous consequences of a  patient regaining consciousness in the midst of a procedure.  Along with several others, he determined to do something about it.

James Waldie, a local pharmacist in Linlithgow, had mentioned to Simpson the use of chloroform as a possible anaesthetic and had sent him a sample for him to trial but it was several months before Simpson got around to testing it on himself and several close associates on the evening of the 4^th of November 1847. The effects of the drug were almost immediate and on the 10^th of that month Simpson who had quickly realised the potential of the new drug published his findings in an issue of the ‘Lancet’. However, the response was not quite what had been anticipated since many medical and religious men were opposed to it since they argued that the pains of childbirth had been ‘decreed’ by God alone and therefore the divine order ought not to be tampered with. 

However when chloroform was applied to Queen Victoria on the delivery of Prince Leopold

on the 7^th of April 1853, this silenced the majority of Simpson’s critics since the Queen Herself had allowed it to be used on Her therefore who dare question that? 

Simpson became involved in various other issues to do with medicine – being involved in the development of a new type of forceps, on medical education which he believed had to be of a more practical bent as well as the notion that the construction of hospitals as fixed permanent structures was not conducive to a patient’s recovery. 

 He himself favoured the construction of ‘pavilion’ or ‘cottage’ hospitals hence the building of the former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was largely due to his notions of ‘hospitalism’. For Bathgate itself, Simpson instigated the award of a thimble to be competed for annually in memory of his mother for the best seamstress at the new Bathgate Academy. In addition, after the death of one of his sons, Jamie, Simpson returned to the simple faith of his son and delivered the very first of his religious lectures on the theme of ‘God is love’ in Bathgate in 1862. On a more practical bent he had helped established a shale oil mining company in 1859 to ease the plight of unemployed weavers in the town.

All this and much more led to him being offered a baronetcy in 1866. At first he was minded to decline this but was prevailed upon to accept and in so doing became the first ever Scottish professor as well as medical man to be thus honoured. When he died on the 6^th of May 1870, a call was made for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey itself, owing to demands from the national and international press as well as the medical men of London – such had been the extent of his fame. However, his wife of 31 years, Jessie declined asserting that her husband wished to be buried at Warriston Cemetery beside his children. On the day of the funeral procession, it appeared that all Edinburgh came out to say farewell one last time to this ‘Bathgate bairn’ made good. On his tombstone there is a butterfly unfolding its wings - the ancient Greek symbol of immortality. It is well then that Bathgate remembers this one of its more famous ‘bairns’ who undoubtedly deserves all our tributes today.

David W. Main

21/03/2011