William Flockhart

William Flockhart, L.R.C.S.E. (1808 – 1871) was a Scottish chemist, a pharmacist who provided chloroform to Doctor (later Sir) James Young Simpson for his anaesthesia experiment at 52 Queen Street, Edinburgh on 4 November 1847. This was the first use of this chemical on humans when Simpson tried it on himself and a few friends, and then used it for pain relief in obstetrics, and surgery. This changed medical practice for over a century, according to the British Medical Journal. Career Flockhart had joined John Duncan (also from Kinrosshire, who was 28 years his senior), as a partner in 1833, having started as an apprentice surgeon-apothecary and qualifying as a licenciate of the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh in 1830, when he was 22 years old. He did not practise as a surgeon, but with Duncan, worked closely with other doctors in Edinburgh on experimental drugs, which they then refined to improve in purity, following the medical experiments' results. They were both among the nine founder members of the Northern British Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society (in 1841) and joined the Edinburgh Merchant Company. The second annual dinner of the Pharmaceutical Society included a toast 'to strangers present' by Flockhart, and three years later he was elected president. In his inaugural speech he highlighted the issues on unregulated production, of poisons for example, and the risks from a lack of quality controls, and thus he proposed a 'Universal Phamacopoeia for Great Britain'. In December 1861, Flockhart was also elected to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. Duncan and Flockhart had premises at 52 North Bridge, Edinburgh (now the Balmoral Hotel) which has a plaque to the pharmacists, dedicated in1981, by the International Association for the Study of Pain. The retail pharmacy business under Flockhart's management flourished and another branch at 139 Princes Street, Edinburgh opened in 1846. From 1855 to 1865, Flockhart managed the business and it moved to 6 North Bridge. Duncan, Flockhart and Company manufacturing partnership later extended to a factory at 1 Constitution Street, Leith. When Duncan died, Flockhart continued to partner with his son Doctor James Duncan, and the firm extended rapidly and grew its business on the back of the growing demand for chloroform and other drugs or analgesics.