Henry Laing Gordon

Sir James Young Simpson and Chloroform (1811-1870) Henry Laing Gordon

Simpson was born in the village of Bathgate, in Linlithgowshire, where his father, David Simpson, was the local baker. David's father, who died at the ripe age of ninety-one a few years after James's birth, was the descendant of a line of small hard-working farmers, who added to his work and his profit the practice of farriery. Although modern science has, by the aid of bacteriology, proved such practitioners of the rough veterinary medicine of the day to have been right in ascribing to unseen influences many of the diseases of animals which they found themselves powerless to check, the methods they employed for treatment when what they called witchcraft was at work scarcely have the support of present-day practitioners.