CHLOROFORM

Evening Star, Issue 19765, 16 January 1928, Page 11

CHLOROFORM

ITS EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY FIRST ADMINISTERED BY DOUR SCOTSMAN. Eighty years ago, at the Royal Free Hospital, Edinburgh, a little boy of lour was the first patient to undergo a painless operation under chloroform. The new anaesthetic ws simply administered just sprinkled on a handkerchief by a dour Scotsman with long untidy hair and bushy whiskers. The result was all that he had hoped and believed. He had made many preliminary tests, notably on himself, before trying his new discovery in the operating theatre. This was the crucial test. Rainless surgery, of which he had dreamed and for which he had toiled, had become a reality. Sir James Young Simpson might not have impressed strangers with the sympathy or gentleness of his nature, yet the relief of pain was the object of his whole career. Once lie nearly abandoned medicine, so greatly was he affected by the agony of a woman who had to undergo an operation without an anrestbetic. It was only the thought of the disappointment of his humble parents, who had labored so hard to give their clever boy a chance, that made the baker’s son conquer his feelings and “ stick to his job.”