Simpson, SIR JAMES YOUNG, physician, was born at Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, 7th June 1811, a baker's son, the youngest of a family of eight. He early showed a peculiar talent for medical observation and research; and in the prosecution of his professional studies at the university of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age of fourteen, he so attracted the notice of his teachers as to inspire all of them with an active interest in his future career. He took his M.D. in 1832, his thesis on Death from Inflammation winning the highest admiration; and in 1835 was elected president of the Royal Medical Society. Professor Thomson chose him as his assistant (1837-38), and employed him in the preparation of his course of lectures on General Pathology. During the illness of the professor he supplied his place in the lecture-room with unusual skill and address. He now began professional practice on his own account, and in 1840 succeeded Professor Hamilton in the chair of Midwifery. This position he held with yearly enhanced distinction, and by the rigidly scientific, while popularly attractive, character of his prelections contributed greatly to the renown of the Edinburgh school, both at home and abroad. He was indefatigable, amid the distracting cares of an extensive practice, in promoting the scientific perfection of his art; and his Obstetric Memoirs (2 vols. 1856), edited by Drs Priestley and Storrer, contains the fruits of much patient and ingenious research. In 1847 he was appointed one of Her Majesty's Physicians for Scotland. The discovery by which he will be more particularly remembered is that of the anaesthetic virtues of chloroform. Sulphuric ether had been employed in America by Morton to produce Anaesthesia (q.v.) during the extraction of teeth; but to Simpson belongs the credit of first, in March 1847, introducing chloroform to the scientific world. In 1859 he recommended the stopping of haemorrhage by Acupressure (q.v.). In his own peculiar field of obstetrics his improvements on the old methods of practice were numerous and valuable; his antiquarian researches are embodied in his posthumous Archaeological Essays (1872). He was created a baronet in 1866, and died 6th May 1870. A bronze statue was erected in Edinburgh in 1877.
Besides the Obstetric Memoirs already mentioned his medical and archaeological works include a volume on Acupressure (1864), one on Homeopathy, Selected Obstetrical Works, Anaesthesia, Clinical Lectures on the Diseases of Women, and many papers and notices read before the Royal and Antiquarian Societies of Edinburgh. See the Memoir by Duns (1873), and works by his daughter (1897) and Laing Gordon (1897).