SIR JAMES SIMPSON'S INTRODUCTION OFCHLOROFORM.

BY HIS DAUGHTER.

I have drunken deepOf all the blessedness of sleep.

COLERIDGE.

---. _ _ [ILll

DOOR OF DR. SIMPSON*S HOUSE, 52 QUEEN STREET, WHERETIHE EXPERIMENTS WERE TRIED.

"THE old order changeth, yielding place toI new," and science nowadays presses so

rapidly onward that chloroform, after deaden-ing pain for nearly half a century, may soon besuperseded by 'some newer discovery. Beforethat time comes, before those who can remem-ber when there was no blessed anodyne to annulsuffering, and before those who assisted at theintroduction of chloroform, are gone from us,it may be of interest to look back and recall thecircumstances of its first employment, in 1847,by my father, Professor James Y. Simpson. Ofthe few who were then assisting him in his ex-periments to discover the drug most potent foranesthetic purposes, there survive only two,and from them I have gleaned the recollectionsof that event here recorded.

That an anesthetic drug of some kind hadlong been used, old records bear witness. In-dian hemp had narcotic power, and it is sup-posed that from it was brewed the "wine ofthe condemned" referred to by Amos, 700B. C. In an old Chinese manuscript one Hoa-thoa, A. D. 300, mentions the use of a decoctionof hemp which he gave to one patient who wasto undergo an operation; at the end of someseconds the patient became asinsensible asif hewere drunk, or deprived of life, and after a cer-

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tain number of days he found himself reistab-lished without having experienced the slightestpain during the operation. Homer tells howHelen " straightway cast into the wine a drugthat frees men from grief and from anger, andcauses oblivion of all ills. Such cunning and ex-cellent drugs the daughter of Jove possessed,which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, gave her,an Egyptian." Pliny, speaking of mandragora,says," It has the power of causing sleep in thosewho take it. It is taken against serpents, andbefore cuttings and puncturings,lest they shouldbe felt." One De Lucca, living at the end of thethirteenth century, tells how he compoundeda sleeping-draught, and describes how thesponge is to be saturated with it, and adds, "Asoft as therb shall be need of it, place this spongein hot water for an hour, and let it be appliedto the nostrils of him who is to be operated onuntil he has fallen asleep, and so let the surgerybe performed." The greatest step toward theintroduction of an anesthetic, however, wasmade by Sir Humphrey Davy, who many timesin the last year of the last century experimentedupon himself with nitrous oxid gas, and furtherfound that headache and other pains disap-peared under its influence. Faraday in GreatBritain, and Godman in America, showed asthe result of their observation and experiencethat the effects on the nervous system of theinhalation of the vapor of sulphuric ether werequite similar to those produced by the inhala-tion of the vapor of nitrous oxid gas. Dr. Mor-ton of Boston got the idea into his mind thatsulphuric ether might prove successful, and veri-fied the speculation September 30, 1846, by adental operation on Eben Frost, and fixed thatdate as an era in science.

When James Young Simpson was only a stu-dent in his teens, the agony of a woman underthe knife, though in the skilful hands of Mr. Lis-ton, horrified him in such measure that frombeholding her torture (which was torture alsoto his sympathetic nature) he went to seek workin the courts of law rather than to suffer morein the school of medicine. He, however, neverbecame a writer's clerk. The student lad turned

THE INTROD UCTION OF CHL OROFORM.

his flying footsteps from the Parliament Houseback to the study of the healing art, and fromthat hour he resolved, when he became enrolledin the ranks of medicine, to devote himself tomitigate in some manner the dreadful agonieswhich were endured within the grim walls ofthe Royal Infirmary. After years of toil, whenwork, which he said was "the whole secretalchemy of professional success," had broughthim not only fame but a title, he was calledupon to choose a badge and motto. The heal-ing rod of AEsculapius became the crest ofthe baronetcy he founded, and his motto was" Victo Dolore" (Pain Conquered). The sym-bols thus adopted toward the end of a life ofhard work had been his for over forty years.The serpent-twined rod of zEsculapius hadbeen in his hands a magician's wand to curethe sick, and his chief thought had been to finda weapon wherewith to fight and to conquerpain.

Early in my father's career his attention hadbeen attracted to mesmerism. The question heasked himself was, Might notthe fulfilment of hisanesthetic dreams lie in that direction ? Know-ledge of the powers of hypnotism has gainedsuch ground of late that it now seems asthough in the future it might be the means usedto wrap the suffering in the mantle of " death'stwin-brother - sleep "; but in i837 the know-ledge of it was in its infancy among medicalmen. As usual, however, the young Edinburghdoctor was on the alert to try any new thing.

" I was a great sceptic four weeks ago," hewrites about mesmerism in I83 7 ," and laughedat it all, but I have seen enough to stagger me.Yesterday, for instance, I magnetized a youngwoman by waving my hand only in a looking-glass, behind her back, in which her shadowwas reflected, and she was so sound you couldnot wake her by pinching, tugging, etc., asseverely as you pleased. It would have takenplace, I believe, just as well if the looking-glass had not been there; but I tried the ex-periment with it to please some one present. Ihave all the principal medical men here seeingit done at my hospital." He did not pursuemesmerism further in the way of an anestheticat the time, but he often exerted his powerswith it. One day at luncheon he commandeda lady whom he had mesmerized to remain si-lent till he gave her back the power of speech.Along with his other guests he was laughingat her compulsory dumbness when he wascalled from the room, found he was urgentlywanted at a distance, caught a train, and wasabsent a few days. Meanwhile he quite forgothis dumb victim, but on his return home, wearywith his journey, he was forcibly reminded ofher by many written messages to come at once.Conscience-smitten at having neglected her, he

hurried off immediately. On returning home,when he was asked if he had given her backthe power of speech, he replied: "Yes. Ialmost wish I had n't, for her tongue, beingsilent for so long, and her anger bottled upon the tip of it, I got it all."

Being a reader of divers subjects, and hav-ing a retentive memory, which stored all infor-mation in his weighty brain, he noted wheneverhe read (and he snatched every spare momentto read) in ancient history or bygone poets ofany " show of death." These lines in a poemof Middleton's (1617) interested and puzzledhim:I '11 imitate the pities of old surgeonsTo this lost limb - who, ere they show their art,Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part.

Working to pay off a" frightful load of debt,"which he calls the f500 he owed his well-loved elder brother Sandy for his education,and for his start in life in the little house inDean Terrace, he had not the time he cravedto devote to experiments and discovery. Hehad given hostages to fortune, too, which kepthim all the more zealously busy and anxiousfirst to earn daily bread, then name and fame." I look upon it as a good augury," he usedto say laughingly, in these days, " that Stock-bridge, Success, and Simpson all begin with S."

In 184 6, when word came from America thatsulphuric ether had been found an efficient an-esthetic, his heart bounded within him. Fromhis earliest days, when once he had work inhand, he was keen to go on till it was finished,and finished to the best of his ability. Whateverhis hand found to do, he did not only with hiswhole might but with a persistent adroitnesswhich overcame all barriers. He also had an in-genious knack of supplying the necessary toolsfor any work he had on hand, a readiness of re-source which stood him in good stead through-out life. Once when he wanted to stop arattling window, taking what came readiest tohand out of his pocket, which happened tobe a zio note, he found it an effectual pad.A friend recalled to me lately another exampleof his quickness of resource. A patient of hiswas under chloroform, when, owing to a kettlehaving been upset, the supply ran short. Tosave life it was necessary to have more imme-diately. Those around were in despair, till myfather quickly cut out the saturated square ofcarpet, and by its help kept his patient underthe anesthetic.

This faculty of ready resource rendered himapt to try anything new. Still brooding over thediscovery of a panacea for suffering, my fathergrasped the greatness of the step when SirHumphrey Davy's nitrous oxid gas came backto us strengthened by American growth. This

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THE INTRODUCTION OF CHL OROFORM.

sulphuric ether was first used in surgery Octo-ber 16, I846, in the Massachusetts GeneralHospital, under Dr. Morton's supervision. Dr.Simpson was eager for details, eager to try it."I can think of naught else," he wrote to hisbrother Sandy, referring to the first use by anyone of anesthesia in midwifery. In a letter tohis brother dated January, 1847, he tells of be-ing appointed one of her Majesty's physiciansfor Scotland, saying: "The Duchess of Suther-land sent me an extract from a letter of herMajesty to her Grace, saying, that she (theQueen) would nominate me, 'which' (to quotethe Queen's note) ' his high character and abil-ities make him very fit for.' Flattery from theQueen is perhaps not common flattery, but Iam far less interested in it than in having de-livered a woman this week without any painwhile inhaling sulphuric ether." He wrote tothe "Monthly Journal of Medical Science" ofthis bold and successful venture in first usingether in his practice. Writing to a medicalfriend in India, he says: "I have sent you ashort paper on ether. All here use it in surgicaloperations, and no doubt in a few years its em-ployment will be general over the civilizedworld. We do not yet know who was the origi-nal suggester-Mr. Hickman, Mr. Wells, Dr.Jackson, or Dr. Morton. But it is a 'greatthought,' if ever there was one. With manyother medical men, I have taken it myself totry its effects. It is the only just way of judg-ing of it."

To bring the American invention into moregeneral notice and practice was a task at whichProfessor Simpson joyfully worked, and whilethe year 1 847 was still young he was using it suc-cessfully in his own obstetrical practice. Fromhis student days he was well accustomed towork into the early hours of the morning. Hisletters to my mother during their brief engage-ment are all dated midnight, and I, 2, andsometimes 3 A.M. Throughout his life, exceptwhen confined to his bed by illness, these lateor early hours were the ones in which hewrought with his pen. During the summerof 1847, with his mind filled with his impend-ing discovery, he and his assistants "toiledupward in the night."

One who was often with my father at thetime told me that all through the summer hekept repeating the lines:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.

"Romeo and Juliet" was frequently studied,with much speculation as to what it was withwhich the priest had lulled Juliet into so closea semblance of death. He thought much,also, on the lines in " Cymbeline ":

But there isNo danger in what show of death it makes,More than the locking up the spirits a timeTo be more fresh, reviving.

Had Shakspere, he wondered, in that stupen-dous brain of his, any idea of a narcotic whichcould do this deed ?

It was a time of great interest in the littlehouse in Dean Terrace. Round the table inthe well-known dining-room, where my fatherloved to welcome at luncheon all sorts and con-ditions of men of hostile nations and creeds, andwhere, by the sympathetic sunshine of his pres-ence, he often melted antagonistic naturesinto genial friendliness, it was his custom everyevening to have an anesthetic seance. In com-pany with Dr. George Keith and Dr. MathewsDuncan, he there tried various compounds ofa narcotic nature with a boldness not to bedaunted by the thought that the experimentersmight cross the boundary of unconsciousnessnever to return. Professor Miller says:

Other ethers, essential oils, and various gases,chlorid of hydro-carbon, acetone nitrate, oxyd ofethyl, benzin, the vapor of iodoform, etc., weretried. Each " operator," having been providedwith a tumbler, finger-glass, saucer, or some suchvessel, about a teaspoonful of the respirable sub-stance was put in the bottom of it, and this againwas placed in hot water, if the substance hap-pened not to be very volatile. Holding the mouthand nostrils over the vessel's orifice, inhalationwas proceeded with, slowly and deliberately, allinhaling at the same time, and each noting theeffects as they advanced.

One of the servants named Clarke wasmuch interested in these experiments. Onefluid, prepared with chloric ether in aeratedwater, looked like champagne. Clarke cap-tured some of this, and offered the glass to thecook, who, drinking it hastily, fell down un-conscious before the merriment Clarke wastrying to stifle had time to grow into a laugh.He burst into the dining-room affrightedly, say-ing, " For God's sake, sir, come down ! I 'vepushioned the cook." The startled experimen-ters hurried to the kitchen, and quickly restoredthe cook to consciousness. Thereafter Clarkewas chary and contemptuous of any other con-coction, and used to repeat stubbornly the sen-timent, " Chlory's the thing." These meetingsaftersupperwent on till November4, 847,whenchloroform was tested and found sufficient.

The four contemporary accounts of the firsttrial of chloroform which I have been able tocollect are from the two remaining survivors ofthose who were present, together with my fa-ther's in a letter and Professor Miller's from"hearsay" at the time. They vary in smalldetails, but, as Dr. Keith says, in speaking of

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THE INTRODUCTION OF CHLOROFORM.

Professor Miller's account, "Tales change inthe telling." During the autumn ProfessorMiller would come in every morning aboutbreakfast-time, for, he used jokingly to say, hecould not rest till he was sure none of theexperimenters was dead. He says:

On returninghome after awearyday's labor, Dr.Simpson, with his two friends and assistants, Drs.Keith and Mathews Duncan, sat down to theirsomewhat hazardous work in Dr. Simpson's din-ing-room. Having inhaled several substances, butwithout much effect, it occurred to Dr. Simpson totry a ponderous material which he had formerlyset aside on a lumber table, and which, on accountof its great weight, he had hitherto regarded as ofno use whatever. It happened to be a small bottleof chloroform. It was searched for, and recoveredfrom beneath a heap of waste paper, and, witheach tumbler newly charged, the inhalers re-sumed their vocation. Immediately an unwontedhilarity seized the party; they became bright-eyed, very happy, and very loquacious, expatiat-ing on the delicious aroma of the new fluid. Theconversation was ofunusual intelligence, and quitecharmed the listeners- some ladies of the familyand a naval officer, a brother-in-law of Dr. Simp-son. But suddenly there was a talk of sounds be-ing heard like those of a cotton-mill, louder andlouder; a moment more, then all was quiet, andthen a crash. On awaking, Dr. Simpson's firstperception was mental. "This is far stronger andbetter than ether," said he to himself. His sec-ond was to note that he was prostrate on thefloor, and that among the friends about him therewas both confusion and alarm. Hearing a noise,he turned about, and saw Dr. Duncan beneath achair; his jaw had dropped, his eyes were star-ing, his head was bent half under him; he wasquite unconscious, and was snoring in a most de-termined and alarming manner. More noise still,and much motion. And then his eyes overtookDr. Keith's feet and legs making valorous effortsto overturn the supper table, or more probably toannihilate everything that was on it. I say "moreprobably," for frequent repetitions of inhalationhave confirmed, in the case of my esteemed friend,a character for maniacal and unrestrained de-structiveness always under chloroform in thetransition stage.

On December 3, x847, my father, in a letter,writes:

On the first occasion on which I detected theanesthetic effects of chloroform, the scene wasan odd one. I had had the chloroform beside mefor several days, but it seemed so unlikely a li-quid to produce results of'any kind, that it waslaid aside, and on searching for another objectamong some loose paper, after coming home verylate one night, my hand chanced to fall upon it,and I poured some of the fluid into tumblers be-fore my assistants, Dr. Keith and Dr. Duncan,and myself. Before sitting down to supper we allinhaled the fluid, and were all "under the ma-hogany" in a trice, to my wife's consternation andalarm.

In another letter he says:

I had the chloroform for several days in thehouse before trying it, as, after seeing it such aheavy unvolatile-like liquid, I despaired of it, andwent on dreaming about others. The first nightwe took it simultaneously, and were all "underthe table" in a minute or two.

My aunt, Miss Grindlay, and Dr. GeorgeKeith are the only two survivors of the lit-tle company on that November night. MissGrindlay persists in the statement that myfather tried the drug first alone. Her mem-ory is now, at upward of four-score years,somewhat dimmer and less trustworthy thanof yore, but for the last twenty years she hastold the same tale. She says my father cameinto the room with his short, brisk step, andtook out of his waistcoat pocket a little phial,and, holding it up, said, " See this; it will turnthe world upside down." Helping himself toa tumbler off the sideboard, he poured in a fewdrops, inhaled it, and fell unconscious on thefloor, to my mother's horror. Another sisterof hers, Mrs. Petrie, and her husband, CaptainPetrie, were present. This does not coincidewith the previous statements, but it may bethat my father, having got the impatientlylooked-for chloroform (for after having ex-pected it from Liverpool, he had obtained it atDuncan & Flockhart's),and being disappointedin its appearance, and being busy trying otherthings, had put it aside, till, thinking over it,he unearthed it, sniffed at it, and made thetrial my aunt speaks of. Finding it efficacious,he may have pushed it among his papers again,with a glint of fun in his eyes and a caution-ing "don't tell," pleased at the idea of theeffect it would have on his comrades, Duncanand Keith. It is possible that Miss Grindlaymay have confused this scene with another,though to have done so is unlike her usual ac-curacy and precision of recollection. My cou-sin, Miss Petrie, mentions in some notes madeat the time, "On one occasion he [ProfessorSimpson] took something that rendered himquite insensible for upward of two hours. Myaunt [Mrs. Simpson] got a terrible fright. Hetried everything on himselffirst."

Dr. George Keith, in a letter to me on thesubject written in 189 , says:

Dr. Miller, in the appendix to his work on sur-gery, published soon after, gives a full accountof the scene. It is pretty correct, only he saysthat we all took the chloroform at once. This,with a new substance to try, would have been fool-ish, and the fact is I began to inhale it a few min-utes before the others. On seeing the effects onme, and hearing my approval before I went quiteover, they both took a dose, and I believe we wereall more or less under the table together, muchto the alarm of your mother.

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THE INTRODUCTION OF CHLOROFORM.

Your mother was present at the first trial ofchloroform, besides your father, Dr. MathewsDuncan, and myself. Several other gases weretried by one or more of us, your father being anx-ious to find something better than ether, whichhad been used for about a year before, and whichcame from America-that is, the use of it as ananesthetic. It was not then made pure, as it nowis, and the smell was a great drawback. Thenearest to chloroform which was tried before thiswas chloric ether, a new remedy for sickness whichhad lately come from America. It was not strongenough, but one day your father was talking toan old friend from Bathgate, who was head of apharmaceutical establishment, Wishart, in Liver-pool. He mentioned that he made chloric ether,not in the usual way, but by first making purechloroform (a curious liquid long ago discoveredby Dumas, but not turned to any use), which hediluted with alcohol to make chloric ether. Hepromised when he went home from his holidayto send some of it down, as likely stronger thanthe ether. It was so long in coming that yourfather got a little from Mr. Hunter of Duncan &Flockhart, and it was this, not more than half anounce, I think, which we first tried.

What makes it very probable that my auntis correct in saying that my father had a privatetest of chloroform before a select audience be-fore the trio took it is the statement of Dr.Keith that he (Dr. Keith) took it a few minutesbefore the others, because my cousin, in herreminiscence of that time, underlines the state-ment, " He [my father] tried everything on him-self first"; and Dr. Lyon Playfair, in 1883,speaking on vivisection in the House of Com-mons, corroborates this statement. He says:

Sir James Simpson, who introduced chloro-form, that great alleviator of animal suffering,was then alive, and in constant quest of new an-esthetics. He came to my laboratory one dayto see if I had any new substances likely to suithis purpose. I showed to him a liquid which hadjust been discovered by one of my assistants, andSir James Simpson, who was bold to rashness inexperimenting on himself, desired immediately toinhale it in my private room. I refused to givehim any liquid unless it was first tried upon rab-bits. Two rabbits accordingly were made to in-hale it, and quickly passed into anesthesia, andsoon recovered from it, though by an after actionof the poison they both died in a few hours. Now,was this not a justifiable experiment on animals?and was not it worth the sacrifice of two rabbits tosave the life of the most distinguished physicianof his time, who by the introduction of chloroformhas done so much to mitigate animal suffering?

Being "bold to rashness," as Dr. Playfairtestifies, my father was not likely to have let anyone get ahead of him, even by a few minutes; butif he had first tried the anesthetic privately onhimself, he would have been the more ready toobserve the "overture to the swooning dream

of chloroform" enacted by his friend Dr. Keith.Professor Miller thus depicts the awakening ofthe trio from their early experiment:

By-and-by, Dr. Simpson having regained hisseat, and Dr. Duncan having come to an arrange-ment with the table and its contents, the sederuntwas resumed. Each expressed himself delightedwith this new agent; and its inhalation was re-peated many times that night,- one of the ladiesgallantly taking her place and turn at the table,-until the supply ofchloroform was fairly exhausted.In none of the subsequent inhalations, however,was the experiment pushed to unconsciousness.The first event had quite satisfied them of theagent's power. Afterward they held their witsentire, and noted the minor effects on themselvesand each other. The festivities did not terminatetill a late hour - 3 A. M.

The small stock of chloroform was quicklyused. Professor Miller says:

Mr. Hunter of Duncan, Flockhart & Co. waspressed into the service of restoring the supply,and from that-day and hour there was for manymonths no respite for that gentleman. Workingwith an ordinary retort, he could not make chloro-form fast enough for the consumption of Dr.Simpson and his friends in their professionalpractice; and relief only came with the bettermode and larger scale of production.

Miss Grindlay remembers the trio under thetable that November night--how my fatherand Dr. Mathews Duncan lay sleeping heavily,and how Dr. Keith, who had not taken sokindly to the drug, raised his head in a ghastlysemiconscious state above the table, and withthe uncanniness of his expression and his star-ing eyes further startled the already frightenedaudience. Later, when they took it in a smallerquantity, he used to be an obstreperous sub-ject, insisting that the sideboard was a partnerto whom he was engaged to dance, and tryingto drag this stolid wallflower into the middleof the floor with a successful display of forcewhich astonished the onlookers. Miss AgnesPetrie, my mother's niece, was the first womanwho took chloroform, and under its influencewas found to imagine herself an angel. Myfather, wishing to display the power of the newdrug, often pressed her into the service, espe-cially to assure patients of the gentler sex thatthe drug produced not only a harmless, but abeatific state of unconsciousness. My aunt hadbeen so affrighted at the first trial which shewitnessed of chloroform that she absolutelyrefused to inhale it, and to this day has neverbeen under its influence.

This chloroform, which was tried and wel-comed as an anesthetic at Queen street inI847, was discovered at nearly the same timeby Guthrie in America (1831), by Soubeiran

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DRAWN BY F. L. M. PAPE. (BASED ON A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. MOFFAT, EDINBURGH, TAKEN ABOUT i868.)

iri trance (1831), and by Liebig in Germany(18,2). It has been used internally. Guillotemployed it in asthma. Says my father in apamphlet published in I847:

My friend Dr. Formby of Manchester toldme abbut two years ago that he often used it ina diluted form as a diffusible stimulant, and Ihave frequently prescribed it instead of valeriancamphor. But I am not aware that any personused chloroform by inhalation, or discovered itsremarkable anesthetic properties, till the date ofmy own experiments.

After that memorable 4 th of November,trials of various other ingredients proceeded

VOL. XLVII.-- 54.

nightly at 52 Queen street. The results werenot altogether satisfactory to those who par-took of them. A compound of carbon whichmy father tried resulted in an irritation of thethroat and windpipe, and Dr. Keith remem-bers that he had to be kept for hours underchloroform before he got relief. Another time,as my cousin Miss Petrie mentions, he was, tomy mother's alarm, insensible for two hoursafter taking some strange compound. Afterthis, the butler Clarke stuck to his assertion,"Chlory 's the best," more firmly than ever.

One night trial was made of a mixture ofchloroform and champagne. After waiting andfinding that it had no effect on himself or

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THE INTROD UCTION OF CHL OROFORM.

others, my father went to bed. Dr. Duncan,who had taken a larger quantity than the rest,also went off to his room. My mother andMiss Petrie were sitting up, reading, whenthey were suddenly startled by a loud cry fromabove. Rushing to the staircase, they beheldDr. Duncan, half-dressed, clinging to the rail-ing, talking volubly, and giving utterance tothe most unearthly .cries. He addressed him-self: "I say, Duncan, howl! Now, Duncan,make a noise!" and he obeyed these requestswith a vengeance. My mother hurried up torouse my father, who had slept through the dis-turbance the sleep of the weary. They had con-siderable difficulty in getting Dr. Duncan backto his room, and he was ill for some days after.

The first public trial of chloroform in surgi-cal operations was on November 15, in Edin-burgh, on three cases treated by Drs. Miller andDuncan, and curiously enough, as my fatherrecords, "Professor Dumas, the chemist whofirst ascertained and established the chemi-cal composition of chloroform, was present,and in no small degree rejoiced to witness thewonderful physiological effects of a substancewith whose chemical history his own name wasintimately connected."

Before this public test of it, chloroform, onthe eve of its debut as an anesthetic, had a verynarrow escape from being regarded as a fatalfailure. On November 13 it was to be tried inthe Royal Infirmary, but my father, who wasto administer it, was not able to be present.He was much annoyed that press of work haddetained him, but the divinity that shapes ourends was at work that day in keeping him fromhis appointment. The operation went on with-out an anesthetic, and the subject died suddenlyafter the first incision of the surgeon's knife.The public test spoken of, which took placetwo days later, met with success, and from thattime, we may say, a reformation began in theoperating-hospitals through the use of whatDr. John Brown in "Rab" calls "one of God'sgreatest blessings to his suffering children."

In these early days of the new boon to thesuffering, life went merrily as well as busily inthe house of its birth. Assured of its merits,rejoiced at the pain it would ease, its discov-erer was full of sanguine hopes for its success.Ere many weeks had passed, however, hefound he would have to do battle for his giftto mankind, if it was to live and prosper in thisworld of opposition and prejudice. Convincedthat the beginning had been made in drawingthe sting from pain, that those who heretoforehad had hours of agony before them could passthrough these bitter times in painless oblivion,he employed his pen to spread its uses and mer-its. Brimming over with enthusiasm, his greatmind ever open and on the alert for anything

which led onward, his blood boiled with impa-tience when others, blinded by petty jealousy,did not see ahead as he did with an almostprophetic sight. One who knew him truly saysthat though he disliked controversy, he wasever ready to fight "till he had secured what hebelieved to be the triumph of truth. More thanonce he showed his readiness to do battle for abitter enemy who, for the time, was upholdingthe honor of his profession, or the interests ordignity of science." The "straight line of duty"for him lay not in " sequestered nooks, and allthe sweet serenity of books"; but his path be-ing among the perplexing throng of the busyworld, he was always ready to cut his waythrough it with his weapons, the lancet andthe pen.

Speaking in I890, and looking back on thehistory of surgery, Mr. Lawson Tait says:

We are apt to ignore the fact that all our bril-liant advancements of to-day could never havebeen arrived at but for chloroform. We couldnever have developed the splendid work of mo-dern surgery but for the genius and indomitablefighting qualities of James Young Simpson, whothreshed out the victory of anesthesia, and gaveus the anesthetic which for more than half a cen-tury has held its own against all comers. This,the greatest of all medical triumphs, at once brokedown the barriers which had hindered the devel-opment of our art, and a vast change in surgicalpractice became apparent.

The battle for anesthesia was a hard and alasting fight. Prejudice set her narrow faceagainst chloroform, as she had done at the endof last century against vaccination, which madeJenner the means of saving more lives thanNapoleon's sword destroyed. It is difficult torealize that people had to be persuaded intoavoiding pain, but there were many who evenobjected to its alleviation, and held with M.Magendie, the distinguished physiologist, in theFrench Academy of Sciences, that " pain hasalways its usefulness, and it was a trivial mat-ter to suffer, and a discovery to prevent painwas of slight interest only."

The war was directed not so much againstits use in surgery as in midwifery. In the lat-ter it was said to be unscriptural, and contraryto divine commands. This quotation from aclergyman's letter is a fair sample of manyothers, and shows the spirit of the time. It was,he said, "a decoy of Satan, apparently offer-ing itself to bless woman, but in the end it willharden society, and rob God of the deepestcries which arise in time of trouble for help."The religious objection was based on Gen. iii.16, " Unto the woman he said, I will greatlymultiply thy sorrow and thy conception; insorrow thou shalt bring forth children," etc.In the postscript of a letter to a friend in Liv-

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erpool, written November 14, 1847, my fatherexpressed in a condensed form his views andarguments on this point:

By the by, Imlach tells me Dr. P- is to en-lighten your medical society about the " moral-ity " of the practice. I have a great itching torun up and pound him. When is the meeting?The true moral question is, " Is a practitionerjustified by any principles of humanity in not

the Israelites kept their covenant. See Deut. vii.13, etc. . . . Besides, Christ in dying " surelyhath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,"and removed " the curse of the law, being madea curse for us." His mission was to introducemercy, not sacrifice.

Looking back after fifty years, the world to-day wonders that every one did not agree withDr. Chalmers, who, when asked to write a de-

ENGRAVEU BY T. JOHNSON.

LADY SIMPSON, A SPECTATOR OF THE FIRST TRIAL OF CHLOROFORM. (FROM THE PORTRAIT BY ARCHER, 1846. )

using it?" I believe every operation without itis just a piece of the most deliberate and cold-blooded cruelty.

He will be at the primary curse, no doubt.But the word translated " sorrow " is truly " la-bour," " toil," and in the very next verse the verysame word means this. Adam was to eat of theground with " sorrow." That does not mean phy-sical pain, and it was cursed to bear thorns andthistles, which we pull up without dreaming thatit is a sin. God promises repeatedly to take offthe two curses on women, and on the ground, if

fense of anesthesia from a religious point ofview, replied that he did not see any theologicalpart pertaining to it.

The next point attacked was the fatality ofchloroform, and in 1852 its introducer againhad to take up his pen to defend its character.At the end of a paper answering this charge,he says,

The number, for example, of lives lost yearlyby the poisonous effects of opium, etc., is much

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THE INTROD UCTION OF CHL OR OFORM.

greater than that lost by chloroform. At ourdifferent drug-manufactories in Edinburgh wehave upward of two rhillion doses of chloro-form manufactured annually, yet how rarely doesa fatal result follow its use ! Is there any othercommon or potent drug which could be given infull doses in two million of instances per annumwith greater impunity?

To guard against a fatal case, he always ad-vised and administered the purest and best chlo-roform, prescribing quiet for the patient, andinsisting that the dose should be given withouttimidity and in sufficient quantity to render thepatient quickly insensible. Amid the crowd ofwork which hemmed him in, with character-istic energy and perseverance he collectedstatistics of fatal surgery and midwifery casesbefore and after the use of chloroform ; he wassure that the wearing fear which beset a pa-tient previous to undergoing pain, in additionto the enduring of it, undermined the nervesand constitution and increased the death-rate.

Sir James Clarke, her Majesty's physician,wrote to him in 1853, thanking him for a book." You certainly are the most industrious manin the profession. It is really surprising thatwith your extensive and harassing practiceyou can find time to bring forth a volume ev-ery year." He goes on to say that the Queenhad used chloroform in her late confinement,and adds truly, " I know this information willplease you, and I have little doubt it will leadto a more general use of chloroform in mid-wifery practice in this quarter than has hithertoprevailed."

It was very near the end of Professor Simp-son's life, at the age of fifty-nine, when the earlyspring of the year of 187o found him confinedto his room, that an attempt from America wasmade to deprive him of his hard-won honorsin regard to chloroform. To his sickbed, piledwith books, and still the center of his profes-sional activity, came the criticism of Dr. Bige-low, directed against my father's omission tomention the American discovery in a generalreference to the subject, in the course of hisresponse to the speech of Lord Provost Cham-bers on presenting to him the freedom of thecity in which he had lived and worked.

Concerning this controversy Professor Simp-son wrote:

I know from the utmost depths of my own con-science that I never said or wrote a single wordto detract from the mightiness of the discovery ofanesthesia by sulphuric ether. But surely the dis-

covery of another anesthetic by me a year after-ward, more powerful, practical, and useful thansulphuric ether, was in itself a fact of no small mo-ment, and tended, I well know, immeilsely tospread the use of anesthesia on this side of theAtlantic.

My father answered Dr. Bigelow in twoclear explicit letters (bound up among hisposthumous papers), in which he said:

The history of anesthesia has always taken mea full hour in myUniversitylectures; and in theselectures I have year after year paid heartily everydue compliment to the most important part bornein the consummation of the practical applicationsof anesthetics by America, particularly by thecities of Hartford and Boston, and specially by theenergy and genius of Dr. Morton.

And again:

Inoculation was an idea brought from Asiaand Turkey and acted on in England in the be-ginning of the last century. Ere, however, thecentury was closed, a new variety of matter wasproposed to be inoculated by Dr. Jenner, andproved infinitely a greater success. That vacci-nation was thus a modification of smallpox inoc-ulation has never been allowed to detract oneiota, I believe, from the merit of the great patho-logical and practical revolution produced by Dr.Jenner. The two discoveries have never clashedand been entangled together; for they were inour country upward of half a century or moreseparate from each other in the date of theirintroduction and discovery. Neither, I think,would the relative merits of the two anesthetics,the American sulphuric ether and the Englishchloroform, have co-mixed in the manner in whichthey have been confused by you and others, hadtheir discoveries been separatedby upward of halfa century also.

In Boston has been erected a monumentinscribed: " To commemorate the discoverythat the inhaling of ether causes insensibilityto pain; first proved to the world at the Mas-sachusetts General Hospital at Boston, Oc-tober, A. D. 1846." At Westminster, on myfather's bust, are the words : " To whose geniusand benevolence the world owes the blessingsderived from the use of chloroform for the reliefof suffering." Below the date of his death (May6, 1870) might fitly be engraved his motto,"Victo Dolore," for before his letter on anes-thesia had reached America he had been ac-corded rest by him " who giveth his belovedsleep," and so had obtained an everlastingvictory over pain.

Eve Blant/yre Simtpsaon.

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