Alexander Wood
A doctor who put the world in his debt
Shortly before his death in 1884 an Edinburgh doctor by the name of Alexander Wood received the following letter: “I cannot help writing to thank you that I am here. I am only an insignificant unit in the countless number of sufferers whom your remedy has helped through their saddest hours, but my gratitude is very sincere, and I want to tell you so, although I know that the consciousness of having conferred so immortal a blessing upon the world must be a sufficient compensation to you of itself without any spoken thanks”.
The remarkable remedy to which the writer refers is the hypodermic or subcutaneous syringe. More than three decades earlier, in 1853, the question was weighing on Dr. Wood: how best to introduce a dose of morphine into the circulation so that a patient could get the pain relief and rest that they needed? In the case of one patient, an eighty year-old woman, the matter became critical. If she was to survive she needed sleep. Dr. Wood’s biographer, Thomas Brown, takes up the story: “A certain line of reasoning had led Dr. Wood to the belief that benefit was to be expected from the injection of morphia [morphine] under the skin. Taking as his model the sting of the bee, he had constructed a small glass syringe, to which was attached a fine perforated needle point. This needle he passed under the skin, and through it he injected a small dose of morphia, which he could not give by the mouth…The strikingly beneficial result which followed this bold experiment made Dr. Wood aware that he now held in his hand a new method of treatment, which promised far-reaching results”.
Far-reaching indeed! Writing in 1886 his biographer says that “in his most sanguine thoughts he could little have imagined, as he stood at that bedside, how in a few years every physician would be armed with that syringe, and countless patients would have cause to bless his skill”. His syringes were initially used for pain relief and sleep alone (they were advertised as Dr. Alexander Wood’s narcotic injection syringes) but before many years had passed they were being utilised in the treatment of an increasingly wide range of conditions. A recent article identifies Wood as the man who “invented the first true hypodermic syringe that has made today’s mass vaccinations possible”. Thomas Brown’s assessment is fully warranted: “It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Alexander Wood, by this discovery, stands out as one of the prominent benefactors of humanity”.
Birth and early years
Alexander Wood was born in Cupar, a town in the Fife area of Scotland, on December 10th 1817. His parents were fine Christians. His father, Dr. James Wood, had been deeply influenced by Thomas Chalmers at the time of Chalmers’ conversion some years before. Cupar is not far from Kilmany where Chalmers was parish minister and Chalmers was a friend of the family. Brown says that “all who knew James Wood in after life were well aware of how unobtrusively, yet how consistently, for long years he took his part in the duties of the Christian life”. He adds, “it need not be said how much his son owed to the example of a father whose decision and weight of character were felt by all with whom he came in contact”.
Alexander’s mother, Mary Wood, was her husband’s cousin. They shared the same surname before their marriage. She is described as “a devout and earnest follower of Christ” who “commended the truth by all that was amiable and kindly” and who “was regarded by all who knew her (and especially by those who knew her best), as a bright example of Christian excellence in its most attractive form”.
She is referred to by name in a couple of entries in Thomas Chalmers’ journal. They date from 1811, the time of the great change in Chalmers’ life:
“January 28th – Miss Mary Wood called and spent the day with us. We had much conversation about religion; and, O God, may I grow every day in faith and in charity.
“January 30th – I am certainly obliged to Miss Wood. Through her I have enlarged my observations on religious sentiments. I have imbibed a higher respect for the peculiar doctrines. I feel more cordially than ever that my sufficiency is of Christ, and that faith in Him is the most comprehensive principle of practice”. (Memoirs, Vol.1, p. 201)
Thomas Brown comments, “It was no slight service to have, in some measure, aided such a mind in the crisis of his spiritual history”.
The Woods moved to Edinburgh when Alexander was a small boy. He was to remain there his whole life. It was in Edinburgh that he went to school and later trained to be a doctor, it was in Edinburgh that he practised medicine, and it was in Edinburgh that he ended his days. He loved the city. One of his delights in later life was to reminisce about the Edinburgh of his boyhood. The first two chapters of his biography, in fact, are wholly taken up with memories of the city as it was sixty years before and of what it was like to grow up there.
Serving the city
Alexander Wood also served the city, in the first instance as one of its doctors. Coming as he did of a long line of doctors it is perhaps no surprise that that should have been his chosen profession. Here is his mother’s counsel to him as he began his medical studies in 1834: “Your profession is unlike most others in this, that as by lengthening life you may save the immortal soul, every energy of mind should be given to the study and the practice of it, keeping in mind that even a clergyman, in many instances, must yield to you in usefulness, as you gain admittance where he is excluded”. She adds, “Think seriously of this, my dear boy, and pray God to enable you to turn your profession to the noblest ends”.
After graduation and some hospital work Wood established his own private practice. It grew large. His biographer informs us that “sometimes from thirty to forty professional visits a day were required before he could overtake his list of patients”. He also taught. Medical training in Edinburgh was not just University based. Extramural lecturers had a major part to play and in 1841, at the age of twenty-four, Wood became one of them, lecturing on the Practice of Medicine. He was both a gifted public speaker and a hard worker who prepared his lectures carefully. “Six large folios of manuscripts, which now lie before us”, says Brown, “are visible proof that lecturing was to him no routine work. Sometimes rising in the early morning, sometimes sitting far into the late hours of the night, he soon showed that it was no superficial or commonplace treatment of the subject that would satisfy him”. He was popular with his students. “I have, every day I live”, says one, “to be thankful for the information I gained; and, above all, for the precise method of arrangement, without which knowledge, however abundant, is all but valueless”.
Involvement in Edinburgh life was by no means confined to his medical work. Sanitary Reform, for instance, occupied his attention for a number of years. The problem of air pollution, sewage, and the diseases and numerous deaths that they brought was a huge one for Edinburgh. “Who will venture”, he asks, “to raise the curtain that hides from our view all the misery and wretchedness with which such death is often associated? There are racking pains of body with none to alleviate, and agonies of mind with none to soothe; there are weeks of wasting sickness, slowly dissipating the little all…above all, there are the searchings of an immortal soul about to enter an unknown eternity”. What could be done?
Sanitary arrangements, strange as it sounds, were in the hands of the Commissioners of Police. So Dr. Wood became a Commissioner of Police! – a position that, unsurprisingly, entailed responsibilities beyond those connected with foul air and filthy streets. Unsurprisingly too he had the frustration of not seeing all the changes that were so desperately needed. Nevertheless, his biographer assures us that “the services which he rendered to the cause” (with regard to drainage, for example)“were neither few nor unimportant”, and that “he had the satisfaction of knowing that step by step the sanitary condition of the city was being steadily improved”.
A related concern was housing for the poor. A report prepared by Dr. Wood in 1867 highlighted the needs. Considerably more than a third of Edinburgh’s citizens lived in single-room houses, with over fifteen hundred of these having from six to fifteen occupants. “What the effect must be where diseases, and especially those which are infectious, break out”, he writes, “imagination can scarcely picture. The healthy, the diseased, the dying and the dead, crowded together in a single small room, present a picture of misery of constant occurrence, which only those who have witnessed it can possibly realise…But”, he continues, “that the moral disease engendered is even more awful than the physical will readily be supposed. How can morality and decency be preserved among a population so circumstanced?”
In 1868 the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was formed and for eight years Dr. Wood served as chairman of its Acting Committee. The object of the Association was to help the poor to help themselves, and to give relief in such a way “as to preserve the honest and industrious from sinking in the struggle of life”. “It was a noble work”, says Thomas Brown, “to which he gave himself heart and soul”.
Christian Education
One other service to the city was his management of the Edinburgh Tramway Company, a work that he took up in the years after his retirement from General Practice. Passing from that with nothing more than a mention, however, we turn to a work which occupied him throughout the whole of his adult life, namely, Christian Education. Brown informs us that “the first Christian work in which Alexander Wood engaged was in connection with the Sabbath-school carried on by Dr. Muir of St. Stephen’s”. He cared deeply for the children, taught them faithfully, visited them in their homes, kept up the contact, and was able to be of practical help to some of them in later life.
After the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 Dr. Wood became a member and later an elder of St. Bernard’s Free Church. St. Bernard’s had both a day-school and a Sabbath-school. The day-school was known as the Northern District School and Dr. Wood was one of its directors. “Seldom a day passed”, writes the headmaster, a Mr. Dingwall, “that he did not call for a few minutes at least. He knew the major part of the scholars by name – often considerably over 200 in attendance – and was conversant with the environments of not a few of them”. He loved to watch the children at play and would often time his visit so that it would coincide with their recess. Pupils, he believed, should be at lessons no longer than two hours at a time whilst five hours, in his opinion, was quite long enough for the work of a school day. His biographer comments that his leadership helped to give the Northern District School a “high educational position. Strangers from a distance wishing to have a specimen of the common schools of Scotland at their best, began to find their way to” it, “and the influence and example of the school, and especially of Dr. Wood as an educational authority, began to be more widely felt”.
Dr. Wood was also involved in Free St. Bernard’s Sabbath-school. It met in the same building as the day-school and to a large extent was attended by the same children. “The object aimed at”, says Thomas Brown, “was to have the lessons of the week days pervaded by the sacred influence of the Sabbath, and in the Sabbath teaching to have the same intellectual energy which was conspicuous in the school during the week”. At three out of every four meetings Dr. Wood was able to be present. It was he who would round things off with a general lesson for all the classes on the topic of the day. He would also lead the closing devotions. An often-prayed prayer was as follows: “Do Thou, our great Master, enrol us all among Thy disciples; and when we pass through the dark valley of the shadow of death, be our rod and staff; and above its clouds and beyond its shadows do Thou, our Father, be our great reward”.
Closing days
A house-move in his latter years took Dr. Wood to the Grange district of Edinburgh. There he became a member and elder of Dr. Horatius Bonar’s congregation. It remained his delight to teach Bible classes. Dr. Bonar speaks of how his “large knowledge of Scripture” enabled him “to illustrate Bible truths with clearness and power”. This knowledge was the fruit of his own extensive personal study. His wife Rebecca, whom he married in 1842, says that “the part of his home life which I think so peculiarly characteristic of him was that even in the midst of his many arduous duties he found time for years to make…a profound study of the Bible. He used to rise early in the mornings and study hard before going out to his public duties; and eleven bound volumes of his manuscript notes bear testimony to his industry”. Nor are we left in any doubt as to his theological convictions. “In his views of inspiration”, Brown writes, “and in his doctrinal beliefs, he adhered with unshaken faithfulness to the evangelical system in its strictly orthodox form. The faith, once delivered to the saints, was the foundation of all his hopes”.
There is much more that could be told. In the course of his extraordinarily busy life Alexander Wood was elected President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh no fewer than three times. For some years he was a member of the General Medical Council. He served on the Free Church of Scotland’s Education Committee and edited the short-lived Free Church Educational Journal. He was both a formidable debater and, as a doctor, tender-hearted, “his whole bearing” at the bedside of his patients “that of extreme gentleness and delicacy”.
Dr. Wood died on the 26th of February 1884, his death hastened by anxiety over the illness of his beloved wife and the distressing death of a relative. His friend and pastor, Horatius Bonar, touchingly describes his end: “During the last weeks of his life, weeks of weariness, weakness, and pain, he could speak but little, but what he did say, brokenly and by snatches, showed that his thoughts were of things above. ‘Behold the Bridegroom cometh’, he said at one time; and then at another, ‘Peace which passeth all understanding’. These were his last audible words, indicating the inner rest of his departing spirit – a rest which the many and sharp trials through which he had been passing, especially during the later months of his life, had not been able to shake. With that peace within, he passed upward to the City of Peace above, the rest which remaineth for the people of God”.