James Young Simpson

James Young Simpson

Sir James Young Simpson, 1st Baronet (* 7. June 1811 in Bathgate in Linlithgowshire , today West Lothian, Scotland , † 6. May 1870 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish physician, professor of obstetrics and founder of chloroform - anesthesia .

Life

James Young Simpson was the son of a baker and initially trained with his father. As an autodidact and supported by his brother, he continued his education, received a scholarship, enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1825 and studied medicine there from 1827. In 1832 he received his doctorate.

Act

Simpson initially worked as a country doctor and lecture assistant to a pathologist . He also gave classes in obstetrics and worked as a surgeon at the Edinburgh Lying-In-Hopital from 1836 . After he had married his cousin, he was appointed professor to the chair of obstetrics in Edinburgh in 1839 . In 1844 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

On January 19, 1847, in his obstetric practice, he tried sulfur ether, which had recently been used publicly and successfully for the first time in the United States of America. Since he suspected unpleasant properties in the ether, he looked for other possible anesthetics .

The Effect of Chloroform on James Young Simpson and Friends

On the evening of November 4, 1847, in a private session with two friends, he tested chloroform as an anesthetic. Simpson's friend David Waldie suggested using it for painful interventions as early as October 1847.

On November 9, 1847, Simpson gave birth to the mother's first child born under chloroform anesthesia. It was named Wilhelmina Carstairs.

Simpson published his own experiences and findings from the experiment with narcotics on November 12th in a publication that sold 4,000 copies. On November 20, 1847, he published in the medical journal Lancet on anesthesia with chloroform (incorrectly formulated by him as C ₂ HCl ₃ ). Thus, chloroform was then generally introduced for anesthetic purposes .

Simpson was appointed physician and obstetrician to Queen Victoria in 1847 (In 1853, Queen Victoria was successfully anesthetized with chloroform by John Snow at the birth of her ninth child ). On February 3, 1866, Queen Simpson bestowed the hereditary title of Baronet , of Strathavon in the County of Linlithgow.

Simpson wrote a lot of academic papers on acupressure. This procedure has nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine, but describes the ligature of bleeding vessels using metal needles that are stuck under the vessel and then bent over like a clamp. Simpson believed that he had found the cause of wound infections in the thread material, and his vascular needles were quickly abandoned because of a lot of secondary bleeding. On the other hand, he was successful in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology , anesthetics and hospitalism .

When Sir James Young Simpson, 1st Baronet, died in his home after an attack of angina pectoris, his funeral was a public event. In his honor a bust was placed in Westminster Abbey in London and a bronze statue was placed in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh. His son Walter Grindlay Simpson (1843–1898) inherited his title of nobility.

literature

• Julius Pagel : Biographical lexicon of outstanding doctors of the nineteenth century. Berlin, Vienna 1901, Sp. 1599–1602.
• Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Simpson, Sir James Young. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1333 f.
• Albert Faulconer, Thomas Edward Keys: Sir James Young Simpson. In: Foundations of Anesthesiology. 2 volumes, Charles C Thomas, Springfield (Illinois) 1965, Volume 1, pp. 463-463.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 7, 2020 . 
2. ^ Albert Faulconer, Thomas Edward Keys: Sir James Young Simpson. 1965, p. 463.
3. ↑ Walter Sneader: Drug Discovery. A history. Wiley, Chichester 2005, p. 82.
4. ^ J. Menzies Campbell: First Child Born Under Chloroform.
5. ↑ Walter Sneader: Drug Discovery: A History . Wiley, 2005, ISBN 0-471-89980-1 , pp. 82 (English, 472 p., Limited preview in Google Book Search).
6. ^ JY Simpson: On a new anesthetic agent, more efficient than sulfuric ether. In: Lancet. Volume 2, (November 20) 1847, pp. 549 f .; also reprinted in: Albert Faulconer, Thomas Edward Keys: Sir James Young Simpson. 1965, pp. 463-463.

predecessor	title	successor
New title created	Baronet, of Strathavon 1866-1870	Walter Simpson