The correspondence pertaining to some of these disputes was filed and ticketed, with brief contempt, "Squabbles." His controversy with Professor Syme over a personal matter in 1845 was not to the credit of either of these great men, and, as Simpson himself confessed, was equally discreditable to their profession. Simpson had seen, as has been pointed out, several of his teachers fighting long and strongly for their own cherished objects; and he doubtless then, in his student days, learnt the lesson that vigorous persistence had the power to gain much that at first seemed hopeless; he fought with such energy, that he accomplished in his own lifetime what the example of others might have led him to think would have been accomplished only by his successors. The growth of his practice up to 1847 was little short of phenomenal. In 1845 he purchased No. 52, Queen-street, the house which he inhabited up to his death, and which became the Mecca of hundreds upon hundreds of pilgrims from all quarters of the globe. Here, in those years, he was sought and consulted by unceasing crowds; in the public mind he was undoubtedly endowed with more than human powers, and regarded as a magician, at the wave of whose wand pain and disease would vanish. This caused him much embarrassment, and brought upon him the abuse of ignorant persons, irritated to find that, after all, even in Simpson's person, there was a limit to human powers; or of others with unimportant ailments who were disappointed to find that, once having made his diagnosis of their condition, he would have no more of them, preferring to place his time at the disposal of those whose sufferings were real and capable of relief, or whose cases were complicated and interesting. The question of remuneration was always secondary, and so careless was he in pecuniary matters that it is related that he would wrap up interesting specimens, professional or antiquarian, in bank notes; and his trusted valet was in the habit of emptying his pockets at night of the money earned in the day, to prevent its being lost, mislaid, or given away to undeserving persons. With him work was first and fee second. Like a great modern teacher he was able to say, "Work first--you are God's servant; fee first--you are the fiend's." To Simpson "work was master and the Lord of Work, who is God."