Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. This is
Speaker 1: part two of our episode on James Young Simpson. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to part one yet, you should probably
Speaker 1: start there. On November eighth, eighteen forty seven, James Young
Speaker 1: Simpson successfully used chloroform for the first time for a
Speaker 1: pain free delivery of a baby. Just two days later,
Speaker 1: he was ready to share his successes with the rest
Speaker 1: of the medical community. He invited colleagues into his own
Speaker 1: home for a demonstration where a dentist used chloroform for
Speaker 1: a tooth extraction in front of an audience of scientific observers.
Speaker 1: One of the observers was a surgeon in the Edinburgh
Speaker 1: Royal Infirmary, and he was so so impressed by the
Speaker 1: painless tooth extraction that Simpson managed to convince him to
Speaker 1: try using chloroform in surgery. Two days later, with Simpson overseeing,
Speaker 1: that surgeon used chloroform to amputate a diseased forearm on
Speaker 1: a five year old boy. After the operation, the surgeon
Speaker 1: recalled that the patient quote was found in bed like
Speaker 1: a child newly awakened from a refreshing sleep, with a clear,
Speaker 1: merry eye and placid expression of countenance, wholly unlike what
Speaker 1: is found to obtain after ordinary etherization end quote. Within
Speaker 1: a week, Simpson had successfully tested chloroform on thirty patients, and,
Speaker 1: in a frenzy, wrote a paper for publication in The Lancet.
Speaker 1: He wrote about the chemical with flowery enthusiasm, saying that
Speaker 1: it had quote an agreeable, fragrant, fruit like odor and
Speaker 1: a second pleasant taste. This might seem over the top
Speaker 1: and more pertinently premature, given that the chemical had only
Speaker 1: been in use for about a week, and a good
Speaker 1: number of those that had tried it had taken it
Speaker 1: recreationally in Simpson's dining room, but it was clear even
Speaker 1: by that point that chloroform had distinct advantages, especially when
Speaker 1: compared with ether. Chloroform was cheaper and more portable than ether,
Speaker 1: and easier to use. Physicians could hold up a handkerchief
Speaker 1: to their patient's faces rather than using a cumbersome, imposing inhaler.
Speaker 1: Chloroform didn't have a noxious smell that irritated the throat,
Speaker 1: Physicians needed far less of it to sedate their patients,
Speaker 1: and it worked much more quickly and reliably than ether.
Speaker 1: Simpson was so confident about the efficacy of chloroform that
Speaker 1: he wrote a pamphlet promoting the chemical intended for general audiences,
Speaker 1: titled on a New Anesthetic Agent More Efficient than Sulfuric Ether.
Speaker 1: By the end of the month, that pamphlet had sold
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred copies. On December fifteenth, Edinburgh Hospital convened a
Speaker 1: meeting that unanimously concluded that they should use chloroform instead
Speaker 1: of ether in all operations at the hospital moving forward.
Speaker 1: One committee participant recalled there was no instance on record
Speaker 1: where the discovery of a remedy had been so rapidly
Speaker 1: made known and its employment so universally adopted as that
Speaker 1: of the inhalation of chloroform. Before the end of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, established man manufacturers were unable to keep up
Speaker 1: with demand, and new firms were springing up to cash
Speaker 1: in on the rush. But not every doctor was as
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about chloroform as Simpson. There was a dark fear
Speaker 1: around chloroform for both philosophical and medical reasons, and Simpson
Speaker 1: would need to navigate those fears when faced with his
Speaker 1: most important patient yet, a woman who certainly knew her
Speaker 1: way around childbirth. Queen Victoria, I'm Danish forts and this
Speaker 1: is noble blood. One strain of criticism against chloroform arose
Speaker 1: from broader concerns about whether pain had any biological purpose.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was common medical practice that the
Speaker 1: physician should not interfere with the body's natural process and
Speaker 1: should instead leave the body alone to heal itself. Because
Speaker 1: pain was considered a natural function, many doctors thought that
Speaker 1: suppressing it with anesthesia might cause more harm to the patient.
Speaker 1: Simpson had no patience for that argument. He rebutted that
Speaker 1: pain was unnecessary and destructive. In an early paper, he
Speaker 1: quoted the second century Greek physician Galen quote pain is
Speaker 1: useless to the pained. He also had statistics to back
Speaker 1: it up. He found that the mortality rate associated with
Speaker 1: amputation of the thigh decreased from fifty percent to twenty
Speaker 1: five percent when the patients were anesthetized, suggesting that taking
Speaker 1: away patient's pain improved their healing rather than inhibiting it.
Speaker 1: This line of reasoning, buttressed by data, convinced some doctors
Speaker 1: that chloroform was safe to use in surgery. After all,
Speaker 1: surgery is an inherently invasive, unnatural process. The body cannot
Speaker 1: naturally amputate a limb or biopsy by itself, and even
Speaker 1: though early anesthetics were unreliable, opiates and other forms of
Speaker 1: pain reduction have been used in surgery for centuries without
Speaker 1: much controversy, But many physicians balked at Simpson's use of
Speaker 1: chloroform during routine childbirth. Unlike surgery, childbirth is a process
Speaker 1: that the body can undergo without medical intervention. Doctors and
Speaker 1: midwives alike thought that they should facilitate so called natural
Speaker 1: labor without getting in the way. A common adage was quote,
Speaker 1: A meddlesome midwifery is bad because to meddle in any
Speaker 1: of the natural functions of labor, including or relieving pain,
Speaker 1: might cause things to go wrong. But disbelief in the
Speaker 1: importance of labor pain was just as moral as it
Speaker 1: was medical. Victorian women were expected to show their femininity
Speaker 1: by suffering for the greater good. Popular women's conduct manuals
Speaker 1: from the eighteen forties, like the Women of England and
Speaker 1: the Wives of England by Sarah Stickney Ellis, argued that
Speaker 1: women's moral authority came from being patient self sacrificing and disciplined.
Speaker 1: Childbirth was considered the ultimate display of virtue, as being
Speaker 1: able to suffer through pain for the good of a
Speaker 1: child was the ultimate symbol of sacrifice. It also had
Speaker 1: biblical precedence, with the quote in sorrow, thou shalt bring
Speaker 1: forth children from Genesis three sixteen, quote, proving that pain
Speaker 1: during childbirth was a part of God's higher purpose. Even
Speaker 1: though doctors rarely brought out their Bibles to justify labor pain,
Speaker 1: many physicians critical of chloroform used religious language to talk
Speaker 1: about the medical utility of women's physical suffering. As one
Speaker 1: physician put it at the time, quote, the agonies of
Speaker 1: delivery were an indicator of safety and a well nigh
Speaker 1: holy accompaniment of childbirth. Another doctor wrote that it was
Speaker 1: ultimately more ethical to convince their patients to endure labor
Speaker 1: pain because relieving it would deny their biological destiny, as
Speaker 1: quote Daughters of Eve. An obstetrician from Liverpool suggested that
Speaker 1: women who wanted chloroform or childbirth were shirking their natural
Speaker 1: duty and thus were so ethically dubious that they were
Speaker 1: quote in no fit state to make decisions and thus
Speaker 1: should be ignored. Quote, are we going to allow the
Speaker 1: patient to tell us what to do? He wrote. Most
Speaker 1: of these early and influential critics of chloroform did not
Speaker 1: only have ethical concerns. They also worried about chloroform's safety,
Speaker 1: since this was an experimental drug that had gone from
Speaker 1: a niche chemical solvent to a pretty popular anesthetic in
Speaker 1: a little over a month. These critics were also suspicious
Speaker 1: of how Simpson advertised chloroform directly to the public before
Speaker 1: it had been properly tested. One physician wrote quote, I
Speaker 1: did not expect that doctor Simpson would have appealed so
Speaker 1: generally and through so many channels to the feelings and
Speaker 1: imperfect knowledge of society in general. For it is, i
Speaker 1: am happy to say, still very uncommon in our profession
Speaker 1: to find those of its members who would give tone
Speaker 1: to its bearing and conduct. Professors, for instance, of our
Speaker 1: ancient universities going about from one city to another to
Speaker 1: announce and exhibit the wonder effects of new gas, and,
Speaker 1: as I am informed, somewhat after the fashion of a showman,
Speaker 1: to demonstrate them personally at dinner parties and in drawing rooms.
Speaker 1: Simpson replied personally, writing quote, my blood feels chilled by
Speaker 1: the cruel inhumanity and deliberate cruelty which you and some
Speaker 1: members of the profession openly avow you have not yet
Speaker 1: had time to get rid of some old professional caprices
Speaker 1: and nonsensical thought. Simpson invited that physician to stay with him,
Speaker 1: perhaps to try out chloroform himself, but the physician declined.
Speaker 1: That doctor did have a point, though throughout eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: Simpson was still riding the high of his discovery, both
Speaker 1: metaphorically and literally. He hawked chloroform to anyone who would listen,
Speaker 1: and pushed the drug on unwitting dinner guests. While his
Speaker 1: sister in law was a bit cautious after her first
Speaker 1: experiment with it on November fourth, Simpson used to joke
Speaker 1: that he would chloroform her, and he chased her around
Speaker 1: the house with a bottle, laughing. Once, Simpson made a
Speaker 1: cocktail with chloric ether and aer rated water, which he
Speaker 1: called chlor reform champagne, and served it to a dinner party.
Speaker 1: They found it nice but quote hetty. The butler offered
Speaker 1: some to the cook, who downed it and immediately collapsed.
Speaker 1: The butler ran upstairs announced that he had poisoned the cook,
Speaker 1: and the guests rushed to the kitchen to find the
Speaker 1: cook on the floor snoring loudly. The incident was not fatal,
Speaker 1: but it did disturb Simpson's guests. Simpson, however, was completely undeterred,
Speaker 1: as one widow of an Edinburgh physician later recalled the
Speaker 1: professor used to try his experiments with chloroform on us girls.
Speaker 1: He was then just introducing it, and with some of
Speaker 1: the liquid simply poured onto a handkerchief, would have half
Speaker 1: a dozen of us lying about in various stages of sleep.
Speaker 1: Our mother feared nothing and was only too delighted to sacrifice,
Speaker 1: if unavoidably, a daughter or two to science. Chloroform's critics
Speaker 1: listed their reasonable practical objections alongside more philosophical ones about
Speaker 1: the nature of pain and the feminine virtue of suffering.
Speaker 1: This rhetorical strategy majorly backfired. Simpson couldn't effectively undermine his
Speaker 1: critics concerns about the safety of chloroform because it was
Speaker 1: still so early, so no one had the data to
Speaker 1: prove anything substantial either way, and so he went after
Speaker 1: his critics' moral arguments instead, which were on more shaky ground.
Speaker 1: Simpson was willing to fight directly with his critics in pamphlets, articles,
Speaker 1: and published letters directly responding to their points. In December
Speaker 1: eighteen forty seven, and Simpson published a pamphlet entitled Answers
Speaker 1: to the Religious Objections Advanced against the Employment of anesthetic
Speaker 1: agents in midwafery and surgery and Obstetrics. In the pamphlet,
Speaker 1: Simpson wrote that the traditional interpretations of the Biblical quote
Speaker 1: in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children did not mean
Speaker 1: that women were to experience pain, but that they were
Speaker 1: to work during childbirth. He dismissed the moral arguments about
Speaker 1: a woman's inherent predisposition towards suffering as quote aught else
Speaker 1: than indications of a strange degree of eccentricity of thought.
Speaker 1: He dismissed any objection to the use of chloroform as prejudice,
Speaker 1: but soon chloroform's dangers would be impossible to ignore. In
Speaker 1: New ca Casle, on January twenty eighth, eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: a surgeon showed up at the home of a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old girl named Hannah Greener for a routine procedure.
Speaker 1: She had an infected ingrown toenail, and the surgeon had
Speaker 1: arrived to remove it. While it was a minor surgery,
Speaker 1: the nail bed can be surprisingly painful, so the surgeon
Speaker 1: put a teaspoon of chloroform onto a cloth and held
Speaker 1: it toward her nose. She took two breaths before pulling
Speaker 1: the cloth away, but the doctor told her to keep going.
Speaker 1: After the first incision, Hannah flailed until the doctor gave
Speaker 1: her more chloroform. When the doctor pulled up an eyelid
Speaker 1: to check if she was anesthetized, her eye stayed open.
Speaker 1: She turned pale and didn't respond when the surgeon splashed
Speaker 1: water on her face. Two minutes after the surgeon administered chloroform,
Speaker 1: she was dead. An autopsy revealed that quote, congestion of
Speaker 1: the lungs after inhaling chloroform had caused Hannah's death, but
Speaker 1: did not blame the surgeon. The coroner wrote, quote, no
Speaker 1: human foresight, no human knowledge, no degree of science could
Speaker 1: have forewarned any man against the use of chloroform in
Speaker 1: this case. After a report about Hannah's death appeared in
Speaker 1: The Lancet, news spread quickly about the case. It was
Speaker 1: tragic but commonplace for patients to die after surgery from
Speaker 1: infection or blood loss. But it was nearly unheard of
Speaker 1: for a patient to die while surgery had barely begun,
Speaker 1: let alone a young and healthy patient dying during a
Speaker 1: minor operation. Headlines like death by chloroform appeared in newspapers
Speaker 1: across England, but the medical establishment could not reach consensus
Speaker 1: on what exactly had killed her. It was still unclear
Speaker 1: how exactly chloroform worked, so no one knew how it
Speaker 1: had suffocated her. To chloroform skeptics, the episode proved that
Speaker 1: the drug was dangerous and had been adopted too quickly,
Speaker 1: but chloroform supporters thought that these results were inconclusive, and
Speaker 1: that perhaps she died not because chloroform was inherently dangerous,
Speaker 1: but instead because she had been given too much of
Speaker 1: it or it was administered improperly. Some even thought that
Speaker 1: Hannah's death had nothing to do with chloroform at all,
Speaker 1: and that she instead died because of the shock of
Speaker 1: the surgical operation. One physician was unconvinced by all of
Speaker 1: these hypotheses. John Snow, a surgeon from London. Like Simpson,
Speaker 1: Snow was interested in the burgeoning field of anesthesiology, but
Speaker 1: temperamentally these two men could not have been more different.
Speaker 1: Snow was known for being methodical and reserved. He didn't drink,
Speaker 1: eat meat, read novels, or consume any water that hadn't
Speaker 1: been distilled. Unlike Simpson, Snow was a research scientist. He
Speaker 1: had published a paper about how to properly administer ether
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven and had been conducting animal studies
Speaker 1: on chloroform throughout the rest of the year to compare
Speaker 1: fatal and non fatal doses. According to historian Linda Stratman, quote,
Speaker 1: he was the personification of order, keeping a diary of
Speaker 1: every case in which he administered an anesthetic and detailed
Speaker 1: notes of his excs. Spearman's end, his familiarity with anesthesia
Speaker 1: meant that he found the most common explanation that the
Speaker 1: chloroform had suffocated Hannah improbable. Usually deaths from asphyxiation were
Speaker 1: slow and involved a lot of visible struggle, but Hannah
Speaker 1: had rapidly collapsed, indicating to him that something else was
Speaker 1: going on. Snow studied the inquest, testimony, and medical reports
Speaker 1: and found that Hannah had not been suffocated. Instead, she
Speaker 1: had overdosed from having been given too much chloroform too quickly.
Speaker 1: Even though Hannah had only been given one teaspoonful of chloroform,
Speaker 1: it was undiluted, so it was in its strongest form.
Speaker 1: Snow emphasized that this made it dangerously easy for a
Speaker 1: patient to overdose. He also found that the surgeon's method,
Speaker 1: holding a handkerchief dipped in chloroform up to Hannah's nose
Speaker 1: and mouth was too imprecise. There was no way to
Speaker 1: control exactly how much chloroform Hannah was getting. Even small
Speaker 1: factors like the temperature and air circulation in the room,
Speaker 1: or how close the handkerchief was to the patient's face,
Speaker 1: could change how the drug worked. Worse, from his animal studies,
Speaker 1: Snow had found that chloroform vapor continued to accumulate in
Speaker 1: the lungs even after it had already been administered, making
Speaker 1: it even more difficult to control. Luckily, Snow had a solution,
Speaker 1: an inhaler. Snow even had developed a prototype a large
Speaker 1: metal can connected to a gas mask with a hose.
Speaker 1: With this kind of a device, Snow could mix the
Speaker 1: chloroform with air and introduced the drug gradually to make
Speaker 1: sure patients weren't getting too much too quickly. These findings
Speaker 1: should have comforted Simpson, since they suggested that chloroform wasn't
Speaker 1: inherently dangerous, but it was so powerful that it just
Speaker 1: had to be administered carefully. This wasn't so different from
Speaker 1: the arguments Simpson was making himself at the time. He
Speaker 1: had maintained that, just like familiar anesthetics like opiates or ether,
Speaker 1: chloroform wasn't risk free but safe in moderation. And yet
Speaker 1: Simpson was up in arms about Snow's result. Simpson thought
Speaker 1: that Hannah's death had nothing at all to do with chloroform. Instead,
Speaker 1: he fixated on another detail. The surgeon had given Hannah
Speaker 1: some brandy in addition to the chloroform. This was relatively
Speaker 1: common practice at the time to calm nervous patients, but
Speaker 1: Simpson thought that Hannah Greener had drowned from having brandy
Speaker 1: poured into her mouth while she was unconscious. But this
Speaker 1: hypothesis did not make any sense. The surgeon gave her
Speaker 1: brandy before she was given the chloroform, and the autopsy
Speaker 1: showed no signs of drowning. Still, Simpson wasn't the only
Speaker 1: one who disagreed with Snow's findings. Physicians published scathing letters
Speaker 1: in The Lancet and the London Medical Gazette. Arguing that
Speaker 1: Snow was overcomplicating this whole anesthesia business. They thought that
Speaker 1: all a surgeon had to do to safely use chloroform
Speaker 1: was watch the patient and stop when they fell unconscious.
Speaker 1: It was still unclear whether the chloroform had killed Hannah
Speaker 1: through the heart or the lungs, or whether the chloroform
Speaker 1: affected some undiagnosed pre existing condition that reared its head
Speaker 1: for the first time during the surgery. Ever, the methodical
Speaker 1: researcher Snow reluctantly agreed with those conclusions. These findings could
Speaker 1: not be the final word on the safety of chloroform.
Speaker 1: His sample size was too small. Hannah was just one case.
Speaker 1: Snow would have to wait for more deaths before he
Speaker 1: could make a definite conclusion. Unfortunately, he did not have
Speaker 1: to wait long. Within months, reports appeared from across Europe
Speaker 1: and North America of patients dying in surgery after taking chloroform.
Speaker 1: By the early eighteen fifties, Hannah Greener's death no longer
Speaker 1: seemed like a freak accident. Snow put out a paper
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty two comparing twenty one documented chloroform deaths.
Speaker 1: He advanced essentially the same argument as the greener case
Speaker 1: that these deaths were a result of the surgeons using
Speaker 1: handkerchiefs to administer the drug and ending up giving patients
Speaker 1: too much chloroform too quickly. Still, Snow's paper did not
Speaker 1: make that big of a splash. The medical establishment was
Speaker 1: still fighting tooth and nail about every aspect of chloroform,
Speaker 1: whether you needed to measure how much of the drug
Speaker 1: you used, whether it was safer than ether, whether pain
Speaker 1: relief should be used in surgery at all. But one
Speaker 1: very important person did take note of Snow's new paper,
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria. Even though Queen Victoria had nine children, hated
Speaker 1: pregnancy and childbirth, which she called wretched. During her sixth
Speaker 1: pregnancy in eighteen forty seven, the Duchess of Sutherland sent
Speaker 1: Victoria a pamphlet about the obstetric potential of chloroform. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, when she was pregnant with Prince Arthur, she
Speaker 1: sent her Royal accoutier to meet with John Snow about
Speaker 1: potentially using the drug in her own labor, but in
Speaker 1: the end she was too cautious to go through with it.
Speaker 1: By the time she was pregnant again in eighteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: she had Snow administer chloroform to one of her ladies
Speaker 1: in waiting during a tooth extraction. After seeing proof that
Speaker 1: he had administered the drug safely and successfully, Victoria invited
Speaker 1: Snow to court for an interview. Snow put on a
Speaker 1: court suit with a sword and flattened head, and met
Speaker 1: up with Prince Albert, victorious husband and the cause of
Speaker 1: all of these painful pregnancies. On the way there, Snow
Speaker 1: ran into a friend's wife and child on the street.
Speaker 1: He recalled that the child threw up her hands and exclaimed, Oh,
Speaker 1: isn't doctor Snow pretty, Mamma. Snow was short, balding, and
Speaker 1: self professed to be plain, so he repeated this story
Speaker 1: as a self deprecating anecdote for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Upon meeting Prince Albert, Snow and the consort talked through
Speaker 1: the queen's concerns. Snow was impressed by the Prince's interest
Speaker 1: in the sciences, and Albert was comforted by Snow's caution, expertise,
Speaker 1: and humility. Then and there, Albert approved Snow to administer
Speaker 1: chloroform to the queen for the birth of her eighth child.
Speaker 1: On April seventh, eighteen fifty three, at twelve forty p m.
Speaker 1: According to Snow's detailed notes, Snow arrived at the Queen's bedside.
Speaker 1: She had been in the labor for a few hours,
Speaker 1: but wanted to relieve her pain for the final stages,
Speaker 1: and really, who can blame her? Ironically, given how much
Speaker 1: he railed against the use of handkerchiefs in anesthesia, Snow
Speaker 1: gave Victoria a chloroform dipped handkerchief to relieve her pain.
Speaker 1: But Snow figured it was safe to use a handkerchief
Speaker 1: because he was only using a tiny bit of chloroform.
Speaker 1: He had noted that women in labor often required a
Speaker 1: smaller dose of anesthetic, and he aimed to anesthetize his
Speaker 1: patients so lightly that most of them remained conscious and
Speaker 1: responded to commands without remembering the labor pain. He used
Speaker 1: the same method to relieve Victoria's pain, and it worked
Speaker 1: between contractions. Snow reported that quote there was complete ease.
Speaker 1: At one thirteen in the afternoon, Leopold was born. Victoria
Speaker 1: was reported to have said that the experience of using
Speaker 1: chloroform was quote soothing, quieting, and delightful beyond measure. The
Speaker 1: next day she wrote to her uncle, I can report
Speaker 1: most favorably of it myself, for I have never been
Speaker 1: better or stronger. Since the use of chloroform was still controversial,
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace tried to keep it under wraps, but eventually
Speaker 1: news got out. Snow's patience begged him for details about
Speaker 1: the royal birth, but all he would say was that
Speaker 1: Her Majesty is a model patient. One of his patients
Speaker 1: refused to take any more chloroform until Snow told her
Speaker 1: what the Queen had said while she was under the influence.
Speaker 1: Snow said quote, her Majesty asked no questions until she
Speaker 1: had breathed very much longer than you have, and if
Speaker 1: you will only go in loyal imitation, I will tell
Speaker 1: you everything. The patient complied, and then when she woke up,
Speaker 1: doctor Snow was already gone. Simpson too was elated about
Speaker 1: the successful royal birth. It illustrated chloroform's safety and efficacy
Speaker 1: more than any of his letters or pamphlets ever could have.
Speaker 1: If chloroform was good enough for the Queen, it was
Speaker 1: good enough for the public. Simpson still took every opportunity
Speaker 1: he could to promote the drug, and he would eventually
Speaker 1: become one of the most renowned physicians in Britain. He
Speaker 1: was awarded a baronetcy in eighteen sixty six. When Sir
Speaker 1: J James Young Simpson died in eighteen seventy, more than
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people filled the streets of Edinburgh for his funeral.
Speaker 1: According to newspaper reports, Queen Victoria sent a personal message
Speaker 1: of sympathy to the family. Simpson's lectures to medical students
Speaker 1: at the University of Edinburgh compared chloroform to innovations like
Speaker 1: eyeglasses or coffee, which were initially dismissed by the church
Speaker 1: as offsprings of man's wicked mind, but eventually were accepted
Speaker 1: into daily life. But Simpson ended up getting that wrong.
Speaker 1: Concerns about chloroform's safety never went away. After physicians collected
Speaker 1: decades of statistics about how many patients died under the
Speaker 1: influence of chloroform, it developed a bad reputation. By the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. Chloroform also became a popular plot device
Speaker 1: in crime fiction, appearing in lurid tales of criminals incapacitating
Speaker 1: their victims with nothing but a handkerchief. As early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: doctors turned to alternative anesthetics like nitrous oxide and eventually
Speaker 1: intravenous options, chloroform fell out of medical use almost entirely.
Speaker 1: James Simpson's most important contribution to medical science wasn't actually
Speaker 1: chloroform itself. Instead, as one contemporary wrote after his death,
Speaker 1: quote Simpson adopted obstetrics when it was the lowest and
Speaker 1: most ignoble of our medical arts. He has left it
Speaker 1: a science, numbering among its professors many of the most
Speaker 1: distinguished of our modern physicians. He made childbirth something to
Speaker 1: be taken seriously. There is no doubt that Simpson way
Speaker 1: over soled the benefits of chloroform and downplayed its dangers.
Speaker 1: His science was dubious. Throughout his life, Simpson often repeated
Speaker 1: the frankly ludicrous claim that no one had ever died
Speaker 1: from chloroform. But his dogged insistence that patience, particularly women
Speaker 1: giving birth, didn't need to undergo so much pain, has
Speaker 1: stood the test of time. As historian Donald Cayton put it,
Speaker 1: It's hard to say how much longer women would have
Speaker 1: had to wait for anesthesia had it not been for
Speaker 1: Simpson's advocacy. That's the story of James Simpson. But stick
Speaker 1: around to hear about how John snow not only administered
Speaker 1: chloroform to the Queen, but also so helped solve one
Speaker 1: of the deadliest collar outbreaks in London's history. A year
Speaker 1: after John Snow gave chloroform to Queen Victoria, in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, an outbreak of cholera tore through London. Tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people died throughout the city. Most thought
Speaker 1: that the disease spread through the air, but John Snow
Speaker 1: had another hypothesis. Cholera was in the water. Snow had
Speaker 1: first developed that theory during a previous collar outbreak in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine, when he noticed that more people were
Speaker 1: dying of cholera that got their water from two specific
Speaker 1: companies in South London and so in eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: he started analyzing colera deaths in a similar way to
Speaker 1: those that died of chloroform, looking for patterns. After marking
Speaker 1: out the cases on a map of the city, he
Speaker 1: noticed that deaths were concentrated around a pump at Broadwick Street,
Speaker 1: where townspeople came to collect water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.
Speaker 1: Snow published his results and convinced the city to take
Speaker 1: away the pump handle Soon the collar outbreak went away. Later,
Speaker 1: the authorities discovered that the pump had been contaminated by
Speaker 1: a leaky sewer, confirming Snow's theory. Today, there is a
Speaker 1: replica of the pump on Broadwick Street without a handle,
Speaker 1: named after John Snow to commemorate his essential discovery. Noble
Speaker 1: Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick,
Speaker 1: Paul Jaffey, Natasha Laski, and me Dana Swartz. The show
Speaker 1: is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Nomes Griffin,
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