James Young Simpson

I Sing This Song Of Love For You – featuring Lucy Stimpson- Maynard from the album “I Look Up To The Heavens” recorded and produced by John Hodgkinson

For the next few weeks I would like to share some wonderful messages concerning “God Given Ideas” that I recently read in UCBs “The Word For Today” written by Bob and Debbie Gass.
Good ideas come from God, so ask Him for one. The world’s been blessed by those who did. Consider anaesthesia: how would you like to be operated on without it? That is the way they did it until a Scottish doctor named James Young Simpson introduced something he called ‘artificial sleep’.
As a student at Edinburgh University he was attracted to surgery because he was troubled by the pain and mortality rate experienced during operations. As a result of reading ‘And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam’ (Genesis 2:21 NKJV), Simpson thought chloroform might be the answer. He first experimented on himself. Finally, in 1847, the first three operations with chloroform took place. One of the patients, a young soldier, enjoyed it so much that he seized the sponge and inhaled again. ‘It was just too good to be stopped,’ he said.
At first Simpson encountered opposition. Some thought it was a sin to interfere with nature. ‘Hand me the Bible,’ said Dr Simpson. ‘This is how God operated on Adam.’ Simpson made speeches, wrote letters and pamphlets and tried to convince those who opposed him that this was the way forward. In a setback, when three deaths attributed to chloroform were reported from other hospitals, Simpson was able to show them that they were not applying the anaesthesia correctly. The tide turned when Queen Victoria gave birth to her eighth child under chloroform and declared that she was ‘greatly pleased with its effect.

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