LAWSON TAIT—A GRATEFUL PUPIL OF JAMES YOUNG SIMPSON

MR. PRESIDENT, may I express my thanks to you and your Council for the unexpected honour of being invited to deliver the fourth Simpson Oration. My ability to do justice to the occasion is doubtful but I take some pleasure in being the first Englishman to face the task. I have chosen to talk about one of Simpson’s pupils, Lawson Tait. As a member of the staff of the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women, which owes its foundation to Tait, I am proud to pay tribute to his name; he, at least, would appreciate that my discourse is to a learned audience in London, the scene of many of his battles. I am indebted to the many who have written about him and to the Birmingham Medical Institute, of which he was a founder member, for access to their collection of his publications. To Dr. B. T. Davis, Assistant Dean of our Medical School, I express my appreciation of his invaluable help. Tait was the first Professor of Gynaecology in Birmingham and did much to foster the development of the University. His home in Great Charles Street became the entrance to the old medical school. Lawson Tait was born in Edinburgh in 1845, the son of, to use his own words, “perfectly respectable, if not distinguished, parents”. He was educated at Heriot’s Hospital and from that school obtained a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh. Tait soon changed from the Arts Course to the study of Medicine, probably influenced by the pronouncements of Darwin. His pre-medical training gave him a knowledge of languages evident in his later wide reading and translation of foreign medical literature; he learned, too, to debate and to write. Surgery soon appealed to his robust personality and he gleaned much of his craft from James Syme“the words of wisdom which used to fall in epigrammatic form, terse and clear, difficult to forget. With his deft and beautiful little hands, he showed us how his marvellous cures were effected.” The cleanliness of Syme’s performance compared with that of his contemporaries made a lasting impression. A more personal influence on the young student was James Young Simpson, then at the height of his career. Tait was taken into Simpson’s home, assisted him at operations and became a willing disciple in the gospel of hospital reform. Whether or not Tait was an illegitimate son of Simpson, we do not knowhis birth was not registered and in manhood he bore a striking resemblance to Simpson. Tait encouraged his own students to link his name with that of Simpson-this is reflected in Brett Young’s novel, Dr. Bradley Remembers, which illustrates the medical background of Birmingham in Lawson Tait’s time and contains a thinly disguised reference to him as Mr. Simpson Lyle. In private, Tait is said to have denied the rumour, as did Simpson’s family. Whatever the truth, Tait, the student, received great encouragement from “The Master” and under his roof met famous people, came to appreciate good living and absorbed the controversial atmosphere that existed in Edinburgh. A year after qualification, Tait became House