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Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion advised.

This is part two of our episode on James Young Simpson.

If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, you should probably start

there. On November 8, 1847, James Young Simpson successfully used chloroform for the first time for a pain-free delivery of a baby. Just two days later,

he was ready to share his successes with the rest of the medical community. He invited colleagues

into his own home for a demonstration, where a dentist used chloroform for a tooth extraction in front of an

audience of scientific observers. One of the observers was a surgeon in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,

and he was so impressed by the painless tooth extraction that Simpson managed to convince him to try using chloroform in surgery.

Two days later, with Simpson overseeing, that surgeon used chloroform to amputate a diseased

forearm on a five-year-old boy. After the operation, the surgeon recalled that the patient, quote, was found in bed

like a child newly awakened from a refreshing sleep with a clear merry eye and placid expression

of countenance, wholly unlike what is found to obtain after ordinary etherization."

End quote.

Within a week, Simpson had successfully tested chloroform on 30 patients, and in a frenzy,

wrote a paper for publication in The Lancet.

He wrote about the chemical with flowery enthusiasm, saying that it had,

quote, an agreeable, fragrant, fruit-like odor, and a saccharine pleasant taste. This might seem

over the top, and more pertinently premature, given that the chemical had only been in use for about a week,

and a good number of those that had tried it had taken it recreationally in Simpson's dining room.

But it was clear, even by that point, that chloroform had distinct advantages,

...