OUR GREATEST BENEFACTOR IV
By E. M. FORSTER
[The fifth article in this series will be by Lord Eustace Percy, and the siath and last by Sir Arnold Wilson, M.P.] SBIPSON. The name was not at the tip of my tongue. Only after thinking things over and con- sulting with friends did I decide that it was the name I wanted. It is a group-name, like Others in this series. It symbolizes the decrease of pain. To James Young Simpson of Paisley (1811-1870) more than to anyone else that decrease seems attributable. He was the 'first practical anaesthetician; he applied sulphuric ether in midwifery, he explored the neglected possibilities of chloroform, he tried new anaesthetics on himself until his irritable butler exclaimed : " He'll kill himself yet wi' thae experiments, an' he's a big fule, for they'll never find anything better nor chlory." Two American dentists, Wells and Morton, and a French scientist, Flourens, may compete with Simpson for the right to stand as a symbol, but to the value of what is symbolized I nail my colours.
They are likely to float alone. To most people the decrease of pain will seem a tame and perhaps an immoral gift. They will turn contemptuously away from the Scottish doctor to those imposing figures of legend and history who appear to have conferred some- thing positive or something ennobling upon humanity— to the gadget-makers or to the creative artists. The gadget-makers will probably gain most votes, because their work can be pointed at, but it has in my judgement no claim whatever to be considered. It is merely an accidental trimming. What childish praie has been lavished on the potter's wheel and the tele- phone ! Yet how easy to imagine a planet which con- tains neither, and which is inhabited by people as happy and as intelligent as ourselves ! Gadgets only become important after we have got used to them. We have got used to eating off plates, drinking out of cups and ringing people up, and we should be badly hit if these particular conveniences were now withdrawn, but we could equally have got used to doing something else. Most of the gifts of science meet a small need and create a large one. We exaggerate them absurdly because we view them through the habits they have induced in us. Cadmus and Marconi, it is time you were put in your places, and informed that someone else could have filled them. Be gone !
The creative artist must also be dismissed, though for another reason : his influence is never wide enough. Capable of appreciating Beethoven, I should be a smaller, poorer person if he had never existed, and so sincerely do I value him that I would rather have a tooth drawn without gas than be deprived of the violin sonata in C minor. But this is a personal reaction. Beethoven may be infinite and eternal and all that, yet he does not extend further than the hedge at the bottom of my garden. If I look over it I see a motor-tractor, and if I speak to the agricultural worker who is driving it and reveal my faith to him he says, "Then you do like that classical WireleSs ! "—speaking gently and regretfully, for he has a regard for me. Yes I do, and he likes machinery, and admires most the assembler of the casual contraption upon which he sits. He calls it " the last word." I know that I have chosen better than he, but what is the value of my choice if he rejects it ?
The same objection occurs if we turn from strict aesthetics: to those artists who have been creative in morals or religion. It is impertinent to assert that Christ is the world's greatest benefactor, when the majority of mankind would deny it. And apart from counting by heads, we have also to face the fact that all religions have done harm as well as good. Possessed of an absolute guide to conduct, they will always be tempted to persecute -who wouldn't ? Beet hover hasn't the face. As far as I know, he has never harmed any one except two characters in Tolstoy.
No, we must come down from all these grand places, from the mystical and the aesthetic as well as from the mechanical heights, and we must admit that there is no positive gift which • satisfies ilia whole of humanity. We must sidle towards the negative, and honour the unobtrusive workers who have striven not to give but to take away. Look again at my. Simpson. Listen to his use of the word " without." He has been appointed physician to Queen Victoria, whereupon he writes to a friend : "Flattery from the Queen is perhaps not common flattery, but I am far less interested in it than in having delivered a woman this week without any pain while inhaling sulphuric ether." The idea of " without pain " haunted him, and he strove to realize it. He had to face opposition from other doctors as well as from the theologians. He was told that pain was divinely ordered, and chloroform a criticism of the Almighty. " Gifted with the Holy Spirit to be our Comforter," writes an indignant colleague, " what right have we to forget all this and be willing-to go under the deep stupor of a power the influences of which we know so exceedingly little ? " The doctors were particularly outraged that women should be spared suffering in childbirth after their conduct in the Garden of Eden. But Simpson could quote his Genesis with the best of them ; he neatly remarks that the first recorded surgical operation— the extraction of Adam's rib-was performed under anaesthetic conditions and that "the earth was only cursed to bear thorns and thistles which we pull up without dreaming it is a sin." He hoped to extinguish pain.
He did not succeed, and the '40's, when he was active, showed a greater advance in anaesthetics than can be shown by any decade up to our own day. There is no fear of us getting soft. As a lady wrote to her friend, " You need not be uneasy, my dear, over Dr. SimpSon's achievements, there will always be plenty of pain." With the world as it is, jostling victims and weapons together, physical suffering is assured, particularly for the poor. The man who decreases that suffering is in my opinionwell, not our greatest benefactor, for such a person does not exist, but he is our greatest anti-male- factor. He has conferred the only gift universally welcome to humanity : he has taken something away.
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