| Description | Alexander Simpson was born in Bathgate, Scotland on 30 April 1835. He was the nephew of Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870), Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. Simpson studied at Bathgate Academy and later at the University of Edinburgh where in 1856 he received his MD. He was apprenticed to Professor John Goodsir and while he was still a student he was elected as one of the Presidents of the Royal Medical Society. He also studied at the University of Montpelier and in Berlin. He worked for seven years with his uncle in Edinburgh before spending five years in private practice in Glasgow. He succeeded to the Chair of Sir James Young Simpson following the latter's death in 1870. Between 1870 and 1905 he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Edinburgh University and Emeritus Professor of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children. He edited the Lectures on diseases of women by Sir James Young Simpson, and published 'Contributions to obstetrics and gynaecology' and with Dr. Berry Hart 'The Atlas of the Frozen Section of a Cadaver in the Genu-pectoral position'. In 1905 he retired at the age of 70, and a year later he was knighted. He was killed in a road accident during a wartime blackout in 1916.
[Source: www.aim25.ac.uk and www.archives.lib.ed.ac.uk]
Contents: Notes taken by Simpson from lectures by Professor Syme, Professor Goodsir, Edward Forbes and Professor Goodsir, 1853-1854; notebook of casenotes taken by Simpson in Berlin, 1857-1858; letter from William Japp Sinclair, 1909; certificates, 1856-1864; manuscript catalogue of his library, c1882 |