CHLOROFORM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 21, 6 January 1928, Page 8

CHLOROFORM

ITS 80th ANNIVERSARY. FIRST ADMINISTERED BY DOUR SCOTSMAN. London, December 3. Eighty yea.rs ago, at the Royal Free Hospital, Edinburgh, a little boy of four was the first patient to undergo a painless operation under chloroform. The new anaesthetic was simply administered, just sprinkled ou 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. Painless 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 op gentleness of nis nature, yet the relief of pain was the object of his whole career. Once he nearly abandoned medicine, so greatly was he affected by the agony of a woman who had to undergo an operation without an anaesthetic. It was only the thought of the disappointment of his humble parents, who had laboured so hard to give their clever bov a chance, that made the baker’s son conquer his feelings and “stick to his job.”