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PHOTOTHÈQUE HOMÉOPATHIQUE
présentée par Homéopathe International

Dr Stephen SIMPSON (1793-1869)

  

Source : collection Sylvain Cazalet.

Dr. Simpson was one of the early London homoeopathic

practitioners.
In 1836 he wrote a book on "The Practical Advantages of
Homoeopathy." A writer in the British Journal for April, 1856, says
:

Dr. Simpson's was a timely work. The writer should have

remained at his post ; but he was discouraged, and took to a
sheep run in Australia.

Whether he is yet alive or dead this deponent knoweth not. (Brit.

Jour. Hom., vol. 14, p. 194)

Source : Pionners of homeopathy

Stephen Simpson (d.1867) practised homeopathy in London and

Queensland.  Pasted to the front endpaper is an interesting
photograph of him (by Cecilia Simpson) taken in 1867, 2 years
before his death. Mounted before the title page are 4 pages of
hand-written information on his life taken from a Brisbane
newspaper article published in 1869, the year of his death. These
pages protrude slightly beyond the text block.  On the blank
reverse of the first of these is written a note stating that the book
was presented to Charles Simpson (a cousin) by the author and
another note states that the extract was copied out by Charles
Simpson's wife.  The article relates that after studying medicine
Dr Simpson went to Europe and studied under Hahnemann; on
his return, it claims that he was the earliest practitioner of
homeopathy in London and that he wrote the first book on the
subject in English.  Both these claims are untrue but he was
certainly one of the earliest practitioners and this book is one of
the earliest works on homeopathy in English.  According to the
article Dr Simpson had his work attacked by the medical
profession and he left the country for Australia where he
remained for many years in various official postings. Pasted in at
the rear of the book is a printed folding sheet entitled General
Rules for the Diet of Patients under Treatment by the
Homoeopathic or Specific Method with Simpson's name printed
under it and the printed date June 1836.   

 
SIMPSON, STEPHEN (1793-1869), homoeopath and public
servant, was baptized on 29 July 1793 at Lichfield, Staffordshire,
England. He joined the army as an ensign in 1813 and after
service with the 14th Light Dragoons he resigned in 1817 to
qualify in medicine and then to travel extensively in Europe as
personal physician to a member of the Russian nobility. He
became a disciple of Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann, the
founder of homoeopathy, and he practised the new science in
Rome for a number of years. Returning to England with the
Duchess of Sutherland's son, whom he had successfully treated,
he tried to set up a practice in London and there he published in
1836 A Practical View of Homoeopathy, Being an Address to
British Practitioners, the first English book on the subject.
However, because of opposition and ridicule from the medical
profession, he abandoned homoeopathy and left for New South
Wales after marrying in 1838 Sophia Anne Simpson, a relation to
whom he had been engaged for twenty years.

He arrived in Sydney in the Wilmot in January 1840, with a

recommendation to Governor Sir George Gipps from the Colonial
Office. His wife died shortly after their arrival. Next July he sailed
in the Speculator to Moreton Bay, where in May 1841 he was
appointed acting colonial surgeon in the absence of Dr David
Ballow, but thereafter never practised again. With the end of
military government and the removal of Owen Gorman from office
in May 1842, Simpson was appointed commissioner of crown
lands for Moreton Bay and also acting administrator until the
arrival of John Wickham next year. His report to Gipps on Andrew
Petrie's excursion north of Moreton Bay contains an account of
Davis and David Bracewell, whom he afterwards employed on his
property, and in his report on the state of the Aboriginals in the
Moreton Bay district on 1 January 1844 he described his
expedition into the bunya country with Rev. Christopher Eipper,
four mounted policemen and six prisoners in March and April
1843. He sat in the first court of petty sessions in September 1843
and remained a justice of the peace until 1861.

Simpson first lived in one of the empty cottages of the former

female penitentiary at Eagle Farm but he later moved to Redbank
where John Dunmore Lang reported dining with him in a slab hut.
By 1845 he had built a cottage in Goodna, which proved a
welcome overnight stop for Benjamin Glennie and others who
travelled from Brisbane to Ipswich and the Darling Downs, and J.
Watts avowed that Simpson's stud of horses was the best in the
colony. From 1851 Simpson made substantial land purchases in
this area and there his nephew, J. M. Ommaney, after whom a
 near-by mountain was named, was killed by a fall from a horse in
1856.

Simpson was appointed a trustee of the Brisbane General

Hospital in 1848, a returning officer in the 1851 elections, police
magistrate for the Moreton district in 1853. He retired from
government office in 1855. In May 1860 he became a life member
of the first Legislative Council in the popular interest but
attended only once before he left for Sydney in the Yarra Yarra in
December and thence in the Jeddo for England. Although his
non-attendance was questioned in parliament he was granted
leave until September 1864. He died at Portland Square, London,
on 11 March 1869.

Stephen Simpson was known as 'the most respected man in the

colony'. When Henry Mort asked an Aboriginal 'Who is God?' he
received the reply 'Carbon white fellow, like it Doctor Simpson, sit
down here'.

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