At the age of fourteen James Simpson entered Edinburgh University, “a very very young and very solitary, very poor and almost friendless student,” as he himself said forty years after. For two years he pursued classical and mathematical studies, gaining a small bursary before his second session. One of his earliest purchases was a little book on “The Economy of Human Life,” for which he gave ninepence. An extract from it which he wrote in his cash-book is significant of his temper of mind: “Let not thy recreations be expensive, lest the pain of purchasing them exceed the pleasure thou hast in their enjoyment.” Though an economical student, however, his literary tastes were wide, as he early bought Byron’s Giaour and Childe Harold, and Paley’s Natural Theology. He lodged with Dr. Macarthur, a former usher in the Bathgate School, together with John Reid, an old schoolfellow, afterwards Professor of Anatomy at St. Andrews, in the upper flat of a tall house in Adam Street. Reid’s enthusiasm for anatomy seem to have first inspired Simpson to choose medicine as a profession. In the winter of 1827 James Simpson entered as a medical student in the University, and, attending Liston’s class on surgery, soon became conspicuous. He took full notes of lectures, and was freely critical of his teachers. He became a dresser under Liston, and received excellent testimonials from him. But he shrank from surgery, having an exquisite tenderness of heart which almost drove him from the profession. After witnessing on one occasion a poor woman’s agony under amputation of the breast, he started off directly to seek employment as a writer’s (or lawyer’s) clerk. He soon returned, however, deeply imbued with the desire to do something to render operations less painful. Simpson’s summer vacations were passed at Bathgate, natural history and antiquarian pursuits occupying his spare time. In January 1830, just before he was going up for his license to practise, his father died after some weeks’ illness, during which James constantly watched at his bedside. Such an interruption to study at a critical moment might have upset so sensitive a mind. But Simpson went in for his examination in April, and became a member of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons before he was nineteen years of age. His brother Alexander, who, with the rest of the family, furnished faithful and persevering help to the young brother of whom so much was expected, gave him a home while he looked out for some post to occupy him while waiting for his Edinburgh degree, which his youth prevented him from taking as yet. One of the situations which he sought was that of parish surgeon in a little village named Inverkip, on the Clyde. “When not selected,” he writes long after, “I felt perhaps a deeper amount of chagrin and disappointment than I have ever experienced since that date. If chosen, I would probably have been working there as a village doctor still.”