THE DISCOVERY OF ANAESTHETICS. 1844-1847
His early sympathy for suffering--Surgical methods before the
discovery of anaesthetics--His mental struggle caused by the
sickening sights of the operating theatre--His researches into the
history of anaesthesia--Indian hemp--Mandrake--Alcohol--Hypnotism and
other methods--Inhalation of drugs--Sir Humphry Davy--Anaesthetics
discovered in America--Horace Wells and laughing-gas--Morton and
ether--Ether in Great Britain--He uses it in midwifery
practice--Search for a better-anaesthetic--Discovery of anaesthetic
power of chloroform.
From his earliest student days the desire had ever been present in
Simpson's mind to see some means devised for preventing the sufferings
endured by patients on the operating table, without, as he put it,
"interfering with the free and healthy play of the natural functions."
It is difficult for us at the close of the nineteenth century to
understand, without an effort of the imagination, the strong
incentives which he had for such a wish. Even to-day, when operations
are conducted without the infliction of pain, young students are not
unfrequently overcome by the sight and the thought of what is in front
of them. At the commencement of a winter session the theatre is
crowded with those students who are entering upon surgical study, and
with others, not so far advanced, who have come to get a preliminary
peep at the practice of this fascinatingly interesting art. Many of
these at first succumb and faint even before the surgeon has begun his
work, and sometimes are only persuaded to pursue their studies by the
encouragement of kindly teachers.
Simpson also went through this trying experience, but it must have
been a greater struggle to him to persist. The surroundings of the
surgeon at the commencement of the century were vastly more repugnant
to a youth of sensitive nature than to-day. The operating theatre then
has been compared to a butcher's shambles; cleanliness was not
considered necessary, and little attention was paid to the feelings of
the patient. He was held down by three or four pairs of powerful arms
as the surgeon boldly and rapidly did his work, despite the screams,
stopping, perhaps, only to roughly abuse the patient for some agonised
movement which had interfered with the course of action. The poor
wretch saw the instruments handed one by one by the assistant, and
heard the surgeon's calm directions and his remarks on the case. The
barbarous practice of arresting bleeding by the application of red-hot
irons to the surface of the wound had indeed ceased three centuries
before, when that humane reformer, Pare, displaced it with the method
of tying the open blood-vessel, but the patient's blood gushed forth
before him until arrested, into the sawdust spread to receive it, and
the sight and the hot odour of it oftentimes mercifully caused him to
faint. The spirit of Pare who, when relating a successful operation,
would humbly add at the end, "I dressed him; God healed him," had not
descended to those who practised in Simpson's day the art for which
Pare did so much. It had grown to be necessary for a surgeon to be
rough and callous; it was expected of him by the public; he was a man
to be pointed at in the street, and shuddered at when he passed, by
all who devoutly prayed they might escape his clutches. Much of this
conduct was mere mannerism; it had become the custom, and had to be
maintained in order to preserve the dignity and stamp the identity of
the surgeon. Much of it arose from the haste with which the surgeon
had to work; the quicker the operation the better chance had the
patient; it was no uncommon thing to see a bystander timing the
surgeon's work, as the professional time-keeper carefully times a
race; and the rapidity of each surgeon's performances was a subject of
comparison and admiration amongst the students of his day. Much of it
also arose from the effect of the hideous scenes in the operating room
upon the surgeon himself; his nerve had to become of iron if he
desired to succeed, and with the nerve the face and the manner, but
not necessarily always the heart hardened also. Tennyson possibly
recollected these days, when he wrote of the surgeon who
"Sent a chill to my heart when I saw him come in at the door,
Fresh from the surgery schools of France, and of other lands;
Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big merciless hands."
When Simpson first saw Liston raise his knife to operate on a poor
Highland woman, he actually felt so repelled that he contemplated
abandoning his studies, and made a serious attempt to enter upon legal
work instead. But the mental struggle with which medical men of all
countries, and in all times, can sympathise out of their own
knowledge, ended in a victory for medicine, and a triumphant return to
his studies with the question permanently engraved on the tablets of
his mind, "Can nothing be done to prevent this suffering?"
It is necessary and it is certainly beneficial that we should thus
remind ourselves of the horrors which surrounded the surgeon so
recently as sixty years ago. "Before the days of anaesthetics," wrote
an old patient to Simpson, in a letter which he treasured with
pride--the writer was himself a medical man--"a patient preparing for
an operation was like a condemned criminal preparing for execution. He
counted the days till the appointed day came. He counted the hours of
that day till the appointed hour came. He listened for the echo in the
street of the surgeon's carriage. He watched for his pull at the door
bell; for his foot on the stair; for his step in the room; for the
production of his dreaded instruments; for his few grave words, and
his last preparations before beginning. And then he surrendered his
liberty and, revolting at the necessity, submitted to be held or
bound, and helplessly gave himself up to the cruel knife.".
It was, indeed, a monstrous ogre this giant Pain, holding the poor
weak human creature in its merciless clutches, which Simpson even in
his youthful days bethought himself to attack. It is well that we who
are the heirs, should know how Simpson and those others whose names
are ever associated with his, slew the monster, won the victory, and
championed the human race forward into a land where further victories
undreamt of by themselves are now being daily won.
Simpson searched into ancient history in order to ascertain the
methods, if any, by which in remote and mediaeval times surgeons sought
to prevent the pain of operations. The most time-honoured method seems
to have been by the internal administration of drugs, the chief one
used being Indian hemp, which was well known in the East, and under
one of its names _haschish_ gave origin to the term assassin (strictly
eater of haschish). A certain Arab Sheikh got together a band of
followers to whom he administered haschish, which produced in them its
usual effect--beautiful dreams of a delightful paradise. He induced
them to believe so thoroughly in his power to gain for them at death
permanent entrance to this paradise that they obeyed all his ferocious
and bloodthirsty behests. Thus these assassins became known as men
obedient to their leader in any murderous enterprise. Indian hemp was,
and still is, used as a luxury all over the East, as well as to annul
pain, and was used by criminals doomed to torture or execution.
Simpson thought the _nepenthe_ of Homer was a preparation of this
drug; he also refers to the fact that Herodotus relates that the
Massagetae inhaled the vapour of burning hemp to produce intoxication
and pleasurable excitement.
Mandrake was used in a similar manner and for similar purposes as
Indian hemp in the Middle Ages, but it fell into disuse on account of
the fatal results that often followed. It is frequently referred to by
Shakspeare both for its narcotic properties and for its fabulous power
of uttering a scream when torn up by the roots, to hear which meant
death or madness. Simpson cited also well-known passages from
Shakspeare to prove that the practice of "locking up the spirits a
time" was known to that poet.
In later days the intoxication produced by alcohol was taken advantage
of, and instances of its use have been known in quite recent years in
the Colonies, where both a surgeon and chloroform were out of reach.
No drug, however, was known to be of such value in producing
anaesthesia as to be constantly used, and many trials were made of
other means, notably that of compressing the nerves supplying the part
to be operated upon, but this was found to be too painful in itself.
The stupor produced by compressing the carotid arteries--a method
taken advantage of by the ruffians known as garotters--was also put in
practice for a time during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
but it was found too barbarous a method even for those days.
Hypnotism was known to the Indians, Egyptians, and Persians at a very
remote period, and may possibly have been used by them sometimes to
produce anaesthesia for surgical purposes. Simpson was attracted by the
words of the poet Middleton in his tragedy "Women, beware Women"
(1617) where he says--
"I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons
To this lost limb--who ere they show their art
Cast me asleep, then cut the diseased part."
When hypnotism made one of its periodic re-appearances in 1837, this
time under the name of mesmerism, after that extraordinary exponent of
its powers Mesmer, Simpson recognised in it a possible method for
"casting the patient asleep" before operation and set to work to
investigate its phenomena. A Frenchman named Du Potet, disheartened by
the prejudice against mesmerism in his own country, came to London in
1837, and was fortunate enough to receive the support of Dr. John
Elliotson, physician to University College Hospital. Elliotson's
advocacy of the new practice was received with ridicule by the
profession, and was treated with such scathing contempt by the
_Lancet_ and other journals, that he was completely ruined.
Simpson was very successful in his experiments with mesmerism,
conducted on the lines suggested by Elliotson, but he recognised that,
after all, it was not the agent for which he was seeking, and dropped
his researches.
He did not resume them even when Liston, a few years later, stimulated
by the advocacy of the Manchester surgeon Braid, who met with a better
reception than Elliotson, and by the relation of a long series of
successful cases by a surgeon named Esdaile, in Calcutta, actually
performed operations with success on patients brought under its
influence.
The first suggestion to produce anaesthesia by the _inhalation_ of
drugs was made by Sir Humphry Davy in 1800. He discovered by
experiment upon himself that the inhalation of _nitrous oxide_
gas--commonly known as a _laughing gas_--had the power of relieving
toothache and other pains; he described the effect as that of
"uneasiness being swallowed up for a few minutes by pleasures."
Although he stopped short at this stage, and does not seem to have
used the inhalation to produce actual loss of consciousness, he,
nevertheless, forecast the future by suggesting that nitrous oxide
might be used as an inhalation in the performance of surgical
operations, in which "no great effusion of blood" took place.
Some thirty years later Faraday pointed out that _ether_ had
effects upon the nervous system when inhaled, similar to those of
laughing-gas. These two drugs came to be inhaled more in jest than
in earnest; more as an amusing scientific experiment for the sake of
the pleasure-giving excitement they set up, than for the purpose
Davy had suggested. Ether, it is true, was recommended even before
Davy's day for the relief of the suffering in asthma, but until the
fifth decade of the century no one had attempted to prevent
suffering as inflicted by the surgeon or the dentist, by producing
the state of unconsciousness brought about by the inhalation of such
drugs as ether--a process now known to the world as anaesthesia.
The persons who first made the bold experiments which resulted in the
discovery of how to produce anaesthesia were Americans; and two men
were prominently concerned in the discovery. Several others made
isolated and successful efforts with both ether and nitrous oxide, but
they lacked the confidence and the courage to make their success
public and to persist in their experiments. Of these, Dr. Long, of
Athens, Georgia, was one of the earliest; he is said to have
successfully removed a tumour from a patient under the influence of
ether in 1842, and in the Southern States he is regarded as the
discoverer of anaesthesia. Dr. Jackson, of Boston--a scientific
chemist--laid claim to the honour of the discovery after others had
fought the fight and established the practice of anaesthesia. Neither
of these men, for the reason already given, deserves the honour which
is now universally attributed to their fellow-countrymen, Wells and
Morton.
Horace Wells was born at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1815, and was
educated to the profession of dental surgeon. He gave much attention
to the desire present in the minds of many men at that time to render
dental operations painless. On December 10, 1844, he witnessed at a
popular lecture the experiment of administering laughing-gas, and
noticed that a Mr. Cooley, while still under the influence of the gas,
struck and injured his limb against a bench without suffering pain.
The idea at once occurred to Wells that here was the agent he was in
search of, and the very next day he experimented upon himself. If it
has ever been fortunate to have toothache it was so for Wells that
day; he was troubled by an aching molar which was removed by a
colleague named Rigg, whilst he was fully under the influence of
nitrous oxide; and thus he began what he himself at once called on
recovering consciousness, "a new era in tooth-pulling." He proceeded
promptly to test the experiment upon others and with complete success;
and then making his success known, he proceeded with his former pupil
Morton to Boston, and gave a public demonstration of his method which
unfortunately was so imperfectly carried out that he was laughed at
for his pains and stigmatised an impostor. Wells himself stated that
the failure was due to the premature withdrawal of the bag containing
the gas, so that the patient was but partially under its influence
when the tooth was extracted. Wells and Morton were ignominiously
hissed by the crowd of practitioners and students gathered to see the
operation. Wells never recovered from the disappointment and the
illness which resulted, and although he was able to explain his
discovery to the French Academy of Science in 1846, he unfortunately
died insane in New York two years later. Undoubtedly he was the first
to discover the practicability of nitrous oxide anaesthesia, and to
proclaim the discovery with a discoverer's zeal. Although his career
ended so sadly, his efforts had, nevertheless, inspired to greater
endeavour his colleague Morton, who had not only been associated in
his experiments, but had been deeply interested in the subject for
many years.
William Thomas Green Morton was born in 1819; his father was a farmer
at Charlton, Massachusetts. He qualified as a dentist at Baltimore,
and entered into successful practice at Boston. Fired with the same
ambition as Wells, he made attempts to extract teeth painlessly with
the assistance of drugs administered, or sometimes of hypnotism. In
December, 1844, after Wells's failure with nitrous oxide gas, he
wisely abandoned that agent and investigated another which promised
better results. He experimented first with a drug known as _chloric
ether_, but failing to get the desired effect, and at the suggestion
of the aforementioned Dr. Jackson, he proceeded to investigate the
effect of ordinary ether. The first experiments were made on animals,
and were so encouraging that he believed he had at last found the
desired agent, provided the effect on human beings corresponded with
that upon dumb creatures. Boldly and heroically he made the necessary
experiment upon himself, and on September 30, 1846, inhaled ether from
a handkerchief while shut up in his room and seated in his own
operating-chair. He speedily lost consciousness, and in seven or eight
minutes awoke in possession of the greatest discovery that had ever
been revealed to suffering humanity. We can picture the man gradually
awakening in his chair first, to the consciousness of his surroundings
and then to the consciousness of his great achievement; sitting with
his physical frame excited by the influence of the drug which he had
inhaled, and his soul stirred to its deepest depth by the expanding
thought of the far-reaching effects of what he had done.
"Twilight came on," he said, in subsequently relating the event. "The
hour had long passed when it was usual for patients to call. I had
just resolved to inhale the ether again and have a tooth extracted
under its influence, when a feeble ring was heard at the door. Making
a motion to one of my assistants who started to answer the bell, I
hastened myself to the door, where I found a man with his face bound
up, who seemed to be suffering extremely. 'Doctor,' said he, 'I have a
dreadful tooth, but it is so sore I cannot summon courage to have it
pulled; can't you mesmerise me?' I need not say that my heart bounded
at this question, and that I found it difficult to control my
feelings, but putting a great constraint upon myself I expressed my
sympathy, and invited him to walk into the office. I examined the
tooth, and in the most encouraging manner told the poor sufferer that
I had something better than mesmerism, by means of which I could take
out his tooth, without giving him pain. He gladly consented, and
saturating my handkerchief with ether I gave it to him to inhale. He
became unconscious almost immediately. It was dark. Dr. Haydon held
the lamp. My assistants were trembling with excitement, apprehending
the usual prolonged scream from the patient, while I extracted the
firmly-rooted bicuspid tooth. I was so much agitated that I came near
throwing the instrument out of the window. But now came a terrible
reaction. The wrenching of the tooth had failed to rouse him in the
slightest degree; he remained still and motionless as if already in
the embrace of death. The terrible thought flashed through my mind
that he might be dead--that in my zeal to test my new theory, I might
have gone too far, and sacrificed a human life. I trembled under the
sense of my responsibility to my Maker, and to my fellowmen. I seized
a glass of water and dashed it in the man's face. The result proved
most happy. He recovered in a minute, and knew nothing of what had
occurred. Seeing us all stand around he appeared bewildered. I
instantly, in as calm a tone as I could command, asked, 'Are you ready
to have your tooth extracted?' 'Yes,' he answered, in a hesitating
voice. 'It is all over,' I said, pointing to a decayed tooth on the
floor. 'No,' he shouted, leaping from his chair. The name of the man
who thus for the first time underwent an operation under anaesthesia
induced by ether was Eben Frost."
The nature of the agent used by Morton was kept secret only a short
period; the steps he took to bring his discovery before the medical
profession would have rendered it difficult if not impossible, even if
ether had not a penetrating tell-tale odour. Morton laid his method
before one of the surgical staff of the Massachusetts General
Hospital, Boston, the same institution where Wells's ill-managed
demonstration had taken place two years before; he requested, with
complete confidence, to be allowed to exhibit the powers of his agent.
The surgeon was sceptical, but wisely consented, after having
satisfied himself that there was no risk to life. A patient suffering
from a tumour was chosen, and readily consented to act as a subject
for demonstration. A large crowd of professional men and students
assembled in the surgical theatre on the morning of October 16, 1846,
the day chosen for the trial. The senior hospital surgeon, Dr. J.
Collins Warren, was to perform the operation. The spectators, many of
whom no doubt recollected the failure with laughing-gas, were disposed
to deride when the appointed hour passed and Morton did not appear;
but the delay was due only to the desire of the dentist to bring a
proper inhaler, and although the crowd received him with a chilling
reserve, and the occasion was one fit to try the nerve of the
strongest, Morton did not lose his presence of mind. He promptly
anaesthetised the patient, and as unconcernedly as does the modern
administrator, nodded to the surgeon that the patient was ready. From
the first moment that the knife touched the patient, until the
operation was concluded, no sound, no movement indicated that he was
suffering. The men who had scoffed once and had come, even the surgeon
himself, prepared to scoff again, realised the success and the wonder
of it, and remained to admire. "Gentlemen, this is no humbug,"
exclaimed Dr. Warren, as he finished his handiwork. When the patient
recovered he was questioned again and again, but stoutly maintained
that he had felt no pain--absolutely none. "Gilbert Abbott, aged
twenty, painter, single," was the description of the man on whom was
performed the first surgical operation under the influence of ether.
News of the great success rapidly spread, and the experiment was
repeated by Morton and others in America, and similar work was taken
up throughout Europe. It cannot be said that Morton derived much
benefit from his discovery. Although the greatness of it was
recognised in his lifetime, and he received several honours and
presents, he entered into prolonged squabbles concerning the discovery
which worried him into a state of ill-health, ending in his death in
1868. A monument was erected over his grave by the citizens of Boston,
bearing the following concise description of his achievement:--
"WILLIAM T. G. MORTON,
"Inventor and revealer of anaesthetic inhalation,
By whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled;
Before whom in all time surgery was agony,
Since whom Science has control of Pain."
Whilst the discoverer of nitrous-oxide anaesthesia was dying from
chagrin and inaction, and the revealer of anaesthetic inhalation by
ether was wasting time in unworthy disputes concerning priority, and
fruitless endeavours to gain pecuniary reward, a bolder than either
had taken up the work where they had left it, with the high object of
pursuing it until he had for ever established the benefit to humanity
which he recognised in it. He went straight forwards and onwards,
strong in his endeavour; undeterred by the jeers of the ignorant, the
opposition of the prejudiced or the attacks of the jealous, with no
thought of or wish for reward except that which was to come daily from
the depth of sufferers' hearts.
During the Christmas holidays of 1846 Simpson was in London, and
discussed the new discovery with Liston, who was one of the first to
operate under ether in Great Britain at University College Hospital.
The great surgeon thought that the chief application of the process
would be in the practice of rapidly operating surgeons; it was at
first generally believed that the inhalation could be borne for only a
brief period. Simpson speedily showed that no evil resulted if the
patient remained under the influence of the vapour for hours. In the
month of January, 1847, he gained for the Edinburgh Medical School the
proud honour of being the scene of the first use of anaesthetics in
obstetric practice. In March of the same year he published a record of
cases of parturition in which he had used ether with success; and had
a large number of copies of his paper printed and distributed far and
wide at home and abroad, so eager was he to popularise amongst the
members of his profession the revolutionary practice which he
introduced. From the day on which he first used ether in midwifery
until the end of his career he constantly used anaesthetics in his
practice. He quickly perceived, however, the short-comings of ether,
and having satisfied himself that they were unavoidable, he set about
his next great step, namely, to discover some substance possessing the
advantages without the disadvantages of ether. In the midst of his now
immense daily work he gave all his spare time, often only the midnight
hours, to testing upon himself the effect of numerous drugs. With the
same courage that had filled Morton he sat down alone, or with Dr.
George Keith and Dr. Matthews Duncan, his assistants, to inhale
substance after substance, often to the real alarm of the household at
52, Queen Street. Appeal was made to scientific chemists to provide
drugs hitherto known only as curiosities of the laboratory, and for
others that their special knowledge might be able to suggest. The
experiments usually took place in the dining-room in the quiet of the
evening or the dead of night. The enthusiasts sat at the table and
inhaled the particular substance under trial from tumblers or saucers;
but the summer of 1847 passed away, and the autumn was commenced
before he succeeded in finding any substance which at all fulfilled
his requirements. All this time he was battling for anaesthesia, which,
particularly in its application to midwifery, was meeting with what
appears now as an astonishing amount of opposition, on varying grounds
from all sorts and conditions of persons; but the vigour and power of
his advocacy and defence of the practice in the days when laughing-gas
and ether were the only known agents, were as nothing to that which he
exerted after his own discovery at the end of 1847.
The suggestion to try chloroform first came from a Mr. Waldie, a
native of Linlithgowshire, settled in Liverpool as a chemist. It was a
"curious liquid," discovered and described in 1831 by two chemists,
Soubeiran and Liebig, simultaneously but independently. In 1835 its
chemical composition was first accurately ascertained by Dumas, the
famous French chemist. Simpson was apparently not aware that early in
1847 another French chemist, Flourens, had drawn attention to the
effect of chloroform upon animals, or he would probably have hastened
to use it upon himself experimentally, instead of putting away the
first specimen obtained as unlikely; it was heavy and not volatile
looking, and less attractive to him than other substances. How it
finally came to be tried is best described in the words of Simpson's
colleague and neighbour, Professor Miller, who used to look in every
morning at nine o'clock to see how the enthusiasts had fared in the
experiments of the previous evening.
"Late one evening, it was the 4th of November, 1847, on returning
home after a weary day's labour, Dr. Simpson with his two friends
and assistants, Drs. Keith and Duncan, sat down to their somewhat
hazardous work in Dr. Simpson's dining-room. Having inhaled several
substances, but without much effect, it occurred to Dr. Simpson to
try a ponderous material which he had formerly set aside on a
lumber-table, and which on account of its great weight he had
hitherto regarded as of no likelihood whatever; that happened to
be a small bottle of chloroform. It was searched for and recovered
from beneath a heap of waste paper. And with each tumbler newly
charged, the inhalers resumed their vocation. Immediately an
unwonted hilarity seized the party--they became brighteyed, very
happy, and very loquacious--expatiating on the delicious aroma of
the new fluid. The conversation was of unusual intelligence, and quite
charmed the listeners--some ladies of the family and a naval
officer, brother-in-law of Dr. Simpson. But suddenly there was a
talk of sounds being heard like those of a cotton mill louder and
louder; a moment more and then all was quiet--and then crash! On
awakening Dr. Simpson's first perception was mental--'This is far
stronger and better than ether,' said he to himself. His second was to
note that he was prostrate on the floor, and that among the friends
about him there was both confusion and alarm. Hearing a noise he
turned round and saw Dr. Duncan beneath a chair--his jaw dropped,
his eyes staring, his head bent half under him; quite unconscious, and
snoring in a most determined and alarming manner. More noise still
and much motion. And then his eyes overtook Dr. Keith's feet and legs
making valorous attempts to overturn the supper table, or more
probably to annihilate everything that was on it. By and by Dr.
Simpson having regained his seat, Dr. Duncan having finished his
uncomfortable and unrefreshing slumber, and Dr. Keith having come to
an arrangement with the table and its contents, the _sederunt_ was
resumed. Each expressed himself delighted with this new agent, and
its inhalation was repeated many times that night--one of the ladies
gallantly taking her place and turn at the table--until the supply of
chloroform was fairly exhausted."
The lady was Miss Petrie, a niece of Mrs. Simpson's; she folded her
arms across her breast as she inhaled the vapour, and fell asleep
crying, "I'm an angel! Oh, I'm an angel"! The party sat discussing
their sensations, and the merits of the substance long after it was
finished; they were unanimous in considering that at last something
had been found to surpass ether.
The following morning a manufacturing chemist was pressed into
service, and had to burn the midnight oil to meet Simpson's demand for
the new substance. So great was Simpson's midwifery practice that he
was able to make immediate trial of chloroform, and on November 10th
he read a paper to the Medico-Chirurgical Society, describing the
nature of his agent, and narrating cases in which he had already
successfully used it. "I have never had the pleasure," he said, "of
watching over a series of better and more rapid recoveries; nor once
witnessed any disagreeable results follow to either mother or child;
whilst I have now seen an immense amount of maternal pain and agony
saved by its employment. And I most conscientiously believe that the
proud mission of the physician is distinctly twofold--namely to
alleviate human suffering as well as preserve human life." In a
postscript to the same paper he states on November 15th that he had
already administered chloroform to about fifty individuals without
the slightest bad result, and gives an account of the first surgical
cases in which he gave the agent to patients of his friends, Professor
Miller and Dr. Duncan, in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. "A great
collection," he says, "of professional gentlemen and students
witnessed the results, and amongst them Professor Dumas, of Paris, the
chemist who first ascertained and established the chemical composition
of chloroform. He happened to be passing through Edinburgh, and was in
no small degree rejoiced to witness the wonderful physiological
effects of a substance with whose chemical history his own name was so
intimately connected." Four thousand copies of this paper were sold in
a few days, and many thousands afterwards.
It is worthy of mention that, according to a promise, Professor Miller
had sent for Simpson a few days after the discovery to give chloroform
to a patient on whom he was about to perform a major operation;
Simpson, however, was unavoidably prevented from attending, and Miller
began the operation without him--at the first cut of the knife the
patient fainted and died. It is easy to imagine what a blow to
Simpson, and to the cause of anaesthesia this would have been had it
happened while the patient was under chloroform.
Thus in little more than a year from the date of Morton's discovery of
the powers of ether, Simpson had crowned the achievement by the
discovery of the equally wonderful and beneficial powers of
chloroform. Already he had made two satisfactory answers to the
question he had early set himself--first, the application of
anaesthesia to midwifery practice; and, second, the discovery of the
properties of the more portable and manageable chloroform; the third,
and perhaps the greatest, the defence of the practice, and the beating
down of the powerful opposition to anaesthesia was yet required to
render his reply complete.