Simpson's ledger, detailing his first time using chloroform during a birth
James Young Simpson was a 19th century Scottish obstetrician who pioneered the use of chloroform as an anesthesia after experimenting with its properties on his dinner guests. He is an important figure in the history of medicine in Edinburgh; he attended the University of Edinburgh and held his infamous chloroform party, at which all of the guests wound up passed out under the table after sniffing the stuff, in his house on Queen Street. The progressive and dynamic environment of Edinburgh had an obvious effect on Simpson’s character and style of practicing medicine.
Simpson's own collection of books on women's diseases
He is famous for his hard work and brilliance in gynecology and obstetrics; while many doctors at the time shied away from “women’s issues,” Simpson was an advocate for women’s health and safety, especially during childbirth. He pioneered the use of chloroform during childbirth, despite often harsh criticism from opponents of the practice. An interesting conflict in medicine at the time was the divergence between a doctor’s duty to protect human life and his obligation to ease a patient’s suffering. Pernick’s “The Calculus of Suffering” outlines the conflicting opinions of doctors on how much pain, if any, should be alleviated during surgeries (and other procedures, such as childbirth). Other issues, like religion, played a role in the debate, with many arguing that the Bible tells us that women are meant to suffer the pain of childbirth to pay for Eve’s original sin. Allegedly, Simpson responded to these claims by noting that God put Adam to sleep before removing his rib, and thus he must approve of the use of anesthetics. Simpson’s discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform had an enormous impact on the medical community, and the use of chloroform in childbirth and surgery became widespread, particularly after Queen Victoria used it during the birth of a child.
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