Book description
This is the story of one of the great events in the history of
medicine. In 1847, challenging the firmly held convictions of the
medical profession of the time, James Young Simpson demonstrated for
the first time that a woman could be safely relieved of the pains of
difficult and traumatic labour by the administration of a general
anaesthetic. He later added to his fame when he introduced a new and
better anaesthetic, chloroform, which soon became the most popular
general anaesthetic for use in general surgery as well as midwifery.
Its use was endorsed by Queen Victoria when she asked for it to be
administered during the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853. The book also
gives a history of a time of rapid change in Scottish society that
allowed the seventh son of a village baker in a rural apart of
Scotland to go to university and then become a successful physician, a
medical professor at one of the leading university medical schools in
the world and Physician to the Queen, all before he had reached the
age of forty.
Morrice McCrae has been a House Physician and a House Surgeon at the
Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and a House Physician at the Royal Hospital for
Sick Children. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of
Edinburgh and Glasgow, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics
and Child Health. He is the author of The National Health Service in
Scotland: Origins and Ideals (2003), The New Club: A History (2004) and
Physicians and Society (2008).
