Sir James Young Simpson and Chloroform (1811-1870) Masters of Medicine — Edition Insights

STUDENT DAYS. 1825-1830.

Visit to Edinburgh--Sent to the University--Takes the Arts classes--Gains a bursary--Influence of MacArthur and Reid--Robert Knox the anatomist--The Burke and Hare murders--Superiority of the extra-mural teachers of the day--Edinburgh an intellectual centre--University life--His mode of living as a student--Apprenticed to a chemist--Studies surgery under Liston--Regularly falls asleep in the obstetric class--Influence of his teachers--Verse writing--Description of the medical student of the day--Vacation work--Death of his father--Obtains qualification to practice at the age of eighteen.

Although Edinburgh was only eighteen miles from Bathgate, Simpson visited it only once as a schoolboy; probably he walked all the way, for railroads were as yet unknown and it was not a long walk for a country-bred vigorous youth. He exercised his already formed habit of noting objects of interest during this great event in his boyhood, and in his journal there are copies of old inscriptions from tombs in the famous Greyfriars' Churchyard to which he made his pilgrimage.

The boy's nearest and dearest ambition was to become a student at "the College," as Edinburgh University was familiarly termed. It received encouragement in the periodical return to the village of elder boys who had gone up before him. He was specially struck, and afterwards stimulated, by the appearance of one John Reid, his senior by two years, and his former companion in many a country ramble, who came back for the vacations smartened up both physically and mentally by the new life.

Although the collegiate life characteristic of Oxford was unknown in Scots Universities, there was social intercourse amongst the boys very different from that of the village. The ancient Edinburgh University attracted students from all parts of the world, mostly for the medical curriculum, but many preceded the professional course with a year or two's attendance on the Arts classes; and it was usual for young Englishmen of good family to spend a session at Edinburgh before going to Oxford or Cambridge. Probably before he entered the medical classes, Simpson rubbed shoulders with lads of all ranks from home and abroad. Pillans was at this time the Professor of Humanity, Wallace held the chair of Mathematics, John Wilson--better known as Christopher North--that of Moral Philosophy, and Dunbar was Professor of Greek. Wallace had begun life as a bookbinder's apprentice, and Dunbar had risen from being a gardener; the example of these men under whose influence he was brought encouraged the baker's son to go and do likewise.

The family had sent him off to the College with the mission to be famous, and he was beginning only in an orthodox fashion when he entered himself for the curriculum in Arts. It had been easy for him, with his magnificent brain power, to stand _dux_ of the village school over the ordinary village youth; but here, in Edinburgh, he was brought into competition with the picked boys from other country schools, and intellectually eager youths from town schools where the course of instruction was such as more easily to lead to early University success than that of the Bathgate parish school. At first he found difficulty and desponded. The keen observer with senses all alert was dashed to find so much of the College life to which he had so eagerly looked forward only a magnified repetition of the dull school routine. But he was too intent on ultimate success to be repulsed by his initial disappointment, and soon brought his mind into adjustment with the circumstances he found himself in, reserving leisure time and vacations for the exercise of his faculties as he most loved to exercise them. He did not persevere in the Arts course after he found his tastes led him to other studies; he did not trouble to obtain the Master of Arts degree, which was then conferred in a very lax manner; probably he saw its worthlessness, for it was not until the passing of the Scots Universities Act in 1858 that this degree became really valuable. He recognised, however, the value of laying a good foundation of general knowledge; without straining after any distinction he acquitted himself creditably in all his classes. In the second year of the curriculum he won one of the numerous small bursaries of the value of L10 a year, for which logic was one of the chief subjects of examination; but as candidates were restricted to those who possessed either the name of the founder, Stewart, or that of his wife, Simpson, the competition was not particularly severe. His individuality and natural straightforwardness attracted the attention of some of his professors. The boldness of his original essays provided them with food for comment in a manner dear to the professorial heart.