Heavy affliction came now and again to embitter his life. Several children were taken from him in the prime of their life, including his eldest son, who showed great promise of a brilliant medical future, but was cut off within a fortnight after his father was made a baronet. In later life he became an ardent church worker, having joined the Free Church of Scotland when the Disruption took place. 1870 found the vital machine much out of order. Heart pain—_angina pectoris_—so often the scourge of medical men, came more frequently with its terrible strain. But he never relaxed his work in the intervals, until absolutely compelled. In one of his later conversations he said, “How old am I? Fifty-nine. Well, I have done some work. _I wish I had been busier._” One of his expressions showed his distaste for theology. “I like the plain simple Gospel truth, and don’t care to go into questions beyond that.” During almost his last night he was inexpressibly comforted by having with him his brother Alexander, who had watched over him with such tenderness from childhood. He sat on the pillow with Sir James’s head on his knee, and the sufferer again and again slowly uttered the words, “Oh, Sandy, Sandy!” He died on May 6, 1870. He would have been buried in Westminster Abbey but for his own express wish to be buried in Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh. His funeral was such as Edinburgh had, it is said, never witnessed before, business being generally suspended. His widow survived him but a few weeks, dying on the 17th June following. His eldest surviving son, Walter Grindlay, succeeded him in the baronetcy. FOOTNOTES: [5] Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, by J. Duns. Edinburgh, 1873. [6] _Scotsman_, May 9, 1870. [7] Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration. By Humphry Davy. London, 1800. [8] _Lancet_, 1870, History of Anæsthetic Discovery. CHAPTER XVI. _SIR SPENCER WELLS AND OVARIOTOMY._ Thomas Spencer Wells, whose career in the revival of the operation of ovariotomy has attracted very widespread attention and interest, was born in 1818, being the eldest son of Mr. William Wells of St. Alban’s, Herts. Without being formally apprenticed, he enjoyed many of the advantages of the old apprenticeship system, under an able country practitioner, Michael Thomas Sadler, of Barnsley, Yorkshire. Subsequently he spent a year with a parish doctor in Leeds, attending the Leeds Infirmary, and Hey’s and Teale’s lectures. The session 1837-8 was passed in Dublin, and there Graves and Stokes largely influenced the young surgeon. Continuing his course of culture in varied fields, he went to St. Thomas’s, London, and was a zealous pupil of J. H. Green, Travers, and Tyrrell. Here he obtained a prize for the best reports of _post mortem_ examinations. Becoming a member of the College of Surgeons in 1841, he entered the navy as assistant-surgeon, and spent six years in the Naval Hospital at Malta.