Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. Thanks for clicking on this video. If you were expecting a visit to a fantastic
city to hear about a baker's son from Bathgate, who through education, invention, hard work and
caring, went on to become a celebrated doctor and scientist and whose funeral was attended by
thousands, then you've come to the right place, because this video is about James Young Simpson.
If the people, places and events in Scottish history interest you, then the subscribe button's at
the bottom right hand side of the screen. If you'd like to help support the channel, then there's a
link in the description below. You can even join the National Trust, but for now, let me tell you a
story. 1811 is roughly halfway between the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo. Can you
imagine the brutal injuries sustained in those Battles? Limbs ripped off, men screaming in agony,
gangrenous infections, amputations of appendages with nothing to dull the pain but brandy, as you
hear the scrape and feel the vibration of a ship's surgeon sawing through your very bone uggh!
On June the 7th 1811, a Bathgate woman, and a baker's wife, gave birth her eighth child
without the wonders of modern pain relief. He would be called James Young Simpson. He seemed
like an unusually intelligent lad, so his parents pushed the boat out for him to get an education.
He went to Edinburgh University at 14, initially to study arts, but then medicine. Now he almost gave up
when his dad died, but he went back to Edinburgh to please his family who'd sacrificed so that he
could make use of his talents. Simpson did indeed go on to have a hugely successful medical career.
He qualified at 18, but couldn't take up his degree until age 20. He specialized
in obstetrics. He was elected President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh at age 24. The
University of Edinburgh Medical Faculty was the finest in the world at the time and its Chair of
Midwifery was the first of its kind in Britain. Simpson took on that role at the age of 28.
He took obstetric forceps invented by another Scot, William Hunter, and he improved them. In 1848
he pioneered the suction tractor, the forerunner of the vacuum extractor. Now that might not sound much,
but where would pregnant women today be without a vacuum vaginal extractor? I'd love to tell you, but
I'm essentially a 14 year old boy trapped inside a 56 year old man's body, and there's
no way that I could get it out without laughing, unless a vaginal vacuum extractor. The point is
this guy was incredible! It was he who advocated for measuring foetal heart rates. He was one of the
first to use medical statistics. He argued that Puerperal fever, I can't even pronounce it.
It doesn't matter, it was the same thing as something, how would I know? I'm not a doctor,
I'm a storyteller. The point is that he focused on and campaigned for modernisation and sanitation of
hospitals. He suggested medical attendants should wash their hands with chlorine to reduce the
spread of infection. He came up with a new way of controlling blood loss during surgical operations.
If you think more folks should know about James Young Simpson then give this video the
thumbs up and share it when we're finished. The point is that he did loads of things,
but the thing for which is remembered most is the introduction of the use of chloroform as an
anaesthetic. At the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, surgeons had to work as fast as they could
so as to finish the job quickly whilst patients writhed and screamed in pain. Then the surgeon went on
to the next patient who had listened as he waited his turn. Speed of operation saved lives. Now there
was another Scottish surgeon, Robert Liston, who was famed for his speed of amputations. He once
amputated a leg in 28 seconds, but accidentally cut off his assistant's fingers, and both the patient
and the assistant died of sepsis. On another occasion, he amputated a leg in 30 seconds,
but accidentally took off the patient's testicles in the process! Anyway James Young Simpson wanted a
way to reduce pain during childbirth, that was easier than cutting off a bloke's testicles.
In 1799, the celebrated experimenter Humphrey Davy had first used nitrous oxide to relieve pain.
In 1846, William Morton had demonstrated the use of ether.
Early on in 1847, Simpson himself had used ether as an anaesthetic during a difficult delivery,
but it had unfortunate side effects like nausea and irritation of the lungs.
Simpson wanted to find a solution that was more effective and less problematic. Come with me.
He was living here at 52 Queen Street in Edinburgh. You can probably just about see
the carving on the wall, and he and a couple of his mates, okay let's call them assistants, would
meet up at this house to sniff various chemicals so as to find out their effects on the human body.
We've all been in these parties, in fact I think it was at one in this street. Anyway, one night
they decided to use chloroform. This was an organic compound that occurred in nature chcl3 if you must
know. It's a methyl group with three chlorine atoms replacing three of the hydrogen atoms you get ...
it recently been produced in the lab and found to work as an anaesthetic in animals, so James and
his pals sat around one night and had a sniff. They felt light-headed, euphoric and then they collapsed
on the floor. It was the next morning before they woke up and as soon as he did James declared
I'm doing that again, because you see scientific experiments have to be repeatable and predictable.
Now it's worth mentioning that this was around the same time as the astonishing James Clerk
Maxwell was growing up just down the road from here. His statue's in George Street parallel to
this. I'll leave a link at the end to my video on James Clark Maxwell. You really
need to know about this incredible Scot. Anyway look let's go somewhere quieter, come.
Anyway, like lots of scientific discoveries, there was a bit of luck and guesswork involved in
Simpson's experiment because if they'd taken too little, they wouldn't have fallen asleep,
too much and it could have killed them. This was in the summer of 1847. On November the 8th, he
used chloroform for the first time in obstetrics. A week later he gave his first demonstration of
the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic, and he published a paper a few days after that.
He also published an account on the front page of The Scotsman.
It was possibly paranoia, but Simpson felt that you always had to battle against the authorities.
Politically he was a Whig. Think Liberal before The Labour Party, the kind of radical that
might have been born a baker's son in Bathgate,you know the type, he felt he had to fight
against the Tory medical establishment, but the horrific pain involved in surgical procedures
was often a barrier to people seeking medical remedy. Telling the public direct through this
newspaper article, would mean that they would exert pressure for this new wonder therapy.
So chloroform began to be widely used as an anaesthetic, but bizarrely there was opposition
to it being used in the area of childbirth, where Simpson specialized. Why? This was Victorian
Britain, many religious types believed that pain in childbirth was part of the punishment visited
on the human race because of the sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God intended
that women should suffer in childbirth and so reducing the pain of labour would be against God.
Somehow I think that if slamming your scrotum in a car door was a consequence of original sin,
there'd be a sound theological explanation as to why it was no longer necessary.
What do you think? And then in 1853, Queen Victoria availed herself for the benefits of chloroform
during the birth of her eighth child, and if there was anyone that had more influence than
God, it was Queen Victoria. Form an orderly queue ladies. In actual fact, James Young Simpson
was appointed as Queen Victoria's Doctor when she was in Scotland.
He was showered with numerous other accolades; honorary degrees, memberships of societies and
well done, backslapping titles. This baker's lad fae Bathgate was raised to the title of Baronet,
and he was the first person to be Knighted for services to medicine,
but the measure of a life isn't in titles, it's in the esteem in which you're held by the public,
and when this Bathgate lad died at 58, he was offered a place for burial
in Westminster Abbey, but his family said no. The great and the good had to make do with a bust.
They say a hundred thousand lined the streets and two thousand followed the cortege as James Young
Simpson was brought here to Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh to be laid to rest. The baker's lad
had done good. I'm not saying he was the greatest scientist ever, for that you'll need to watch my
video on James Clerk Maxwell, it'll make you feel proud. Just click the link here. If you want to
tell people about James Young Simpson as I think you should, you can do that by sharing this video,
and giving it a thumbs up. Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.