Busy as he was, Simpson fully enjoyed his home and all the inner domestic life. He was a cheery and hearty host to his intimate friends, and took a pleasure in impromptu entertainments got up by himself in his own house, when he found time at his disposal for such amusement. His first child--a daughter--of whom he was mightily proud, was born in 1840; his first son, David, in 1842; and the second, Walter, in 1843. In 1844 the young couple, in the midst of their rising prosperity, suffered the loss of their daughter, who died after a brief illness. Simpson felt the loss keenly, and wrote pathetically on the subject to his relations; long afterwards he loved to talk of her and her winning ways. By 1846 the vast majority of his work lay in obstetrics and gynaecology, although he himself would no doubt have indignantly repelled the suggestion that he was a specialist; his mind recognised the interdependence of all the great branches of the healing art, and the necessity for any who wished to excel or be useful practitioners to be _au courant_ with each and every branch. He had early shown that as a pathologist alone he was worthy of a niche in the temple of fame; and in later days he was urged to apply for the vacant chair of Physic in his own University; while Professor A. R. Simpson tells us that foreigners working in the sphere of surgery sometimes spoke of him as a surgeon. Early in 1847 his good friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, wrote to inform him that the Queen had much pleasure in conferring upon him the vacant post of Physician to Her Majesty. In the Queen's own words, "His high character and abilities made him very fit for the post." He held this post until his death, under the title of Physician Accoucheur to the Queen for Scotland. Thus in his thirty-sixth year, to the pride of his family and of the whole village community in which he had been born and received his early training, to the admiration of patients and friends, as well as to his own conscious satisfaction, the Bathgate baker's son had risen by his own efforts to the highest attainable position in his native land. But the work which was to make him one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of medicine, and raise him to a place of honour in the grateful estimation of humanity, was scarcely begun. CHAPTER VI THE DISCOVERY OF ANAESTHETICS. 1844-1847 His early sympathy for suffering--Surgical methods before the discovery of anaesthetics--His mental struggle caused by the sickening sights of the operating theatre--His researches into the history of anaesthesia--Indian hemp--Mandrake--Alcohol--Hypnotism and other methods--Inhalation of drugs--Sir Humphry Davy--Anaesthetics discovered in America--Horace Wells and laughing-gas--Morton and ether--Ether in Great Britain--He uses it in midwifery practice--Search for a better-anaesthetic--Discovery of anaesthetic power of chloroform.