But the Bible furnished Simpson with the most powerful argument of all in Genesis ii. 21, where it is written: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam; and he slept; and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof." He strengthened his position by explaining that the word rendered "deep sleep" might more correctly be translated "coma" or "lethargy." He had taken the full measure of his opponents when he answered them with this quotation; it was a reply characteristic of the man, and completely defeated these self-constituted theologians with their own weapons. They had attacked him as a man of science, and found that his knowledge of the Scriptures excelled their own. He did not fail to read these people a lesson, and point out the harm done to true religion by such conduct and arguments as theirs, reminding them that if God had willed pain to be irremovable no possible device of man could ever have removed it. Such was the great fight--the fight for anaesthesia--which Simpson fought and won. He was the one man who by his own individual effort established the practice of anaesthesia, while Morton has the honour of being the one man without whom anaesthesia might have remained unknown. Such was the opposition encountered, and such was the timidity of his professional brethren, that but for Simpson's courageous efforts it would have been the work of years to bring about what it was granted to him to accomplish in a brief period; if fear, ridicule, contempt, and bigotry had not perhaps sunk the new practice into oblivion. Of the hundreds who are daily mercifully brought under the influence of chloroform and ether, few are aware what they owe to Simpson, even if they know how great is the suffering which they are spared. Simpson felt that the victory was indeed complete when in April, 1853, he received a letter from Sir James Clark, physician in ordinary to Her Majesty, informing him that the Queen had been brought under the influence of chloroform, and had expressed herself as greatly pleased with the result. It was at the birth of the late Prince Leopold that Her Majesty set her subjects this judicious example.