The personal power and attractiveness of the man were large factors in gaining the practice which he now enjoyed. But he did not depend for success on these alone, by any means. His professional reputation was fully won by great work in obstetrics and gynaecology, and by the introduction of methods and instruments which contributed to the saving of countless lives. It has been said that he gave a new life to the obstetric art, and presided at the birth of gynaecology. He had done this before the great deed was dreamt of which hands his name down to posterity, before his discovery of the anaesthetic power of chloroform. Simpson was a great physician, the leading practitioner of the art and exponent of the science with which his name will always be connected. But many great physicians have failed to fulfil as Simpson did, Robert Louis Stevenson's description of the physician:-- "Generosity he has such as is possible to those who practise an art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion tested by a hundred secrets; tact tried in a thousand embarrassments; and what are more Heraclean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and cheer into the sick room, and often enough, though not so often as he wishes, brings healing." Great as a man and great as a physician, Simpson was actually run after by the greatest in the land. In 1845 he was summoned professionally to London, and gave an interesting description of his kindly reception by the Duchess of Sutherland and her family in a letter written from Stafford House. His advent to London was a matter of notoriety, and he noted that he bought in the street a life of himself which mightily diverted him and made him laugh until he was sore. A year or more later he was invited for rest and change to Erskine House by Lord Blantyre, where he says, "the Duchess of Sutherland, the Marquis and Marchioness of Lorne, and two Ladies Gower have made up with myself all the strangers." "Tell Janet," he wrote to his brother, "I think now artificial flowers very ungenteel. The ladies here wear nothing but real flowers in their hair, and every day they come down with something new and for us males to guess at. Often the Duchess wears a simple chaplet of ivy leaves, sometimes a bracken leaf is all she sports in her head ornaments, and beautiful it looks. Rowans and 'haws' are often worn beaded into crowns or flowers or chaplets. Heather is also a favourite. On Thursday Lady Lorne came down with a most beautiful chaplet tying round and keeping down her braided hair. It was a long bunch of bramble leaves and half-ripe bramble berries--actual true brambles. They have been all exceedingly kind to me, and I really feel quite at home among them though the only untitled personage at table."