Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/292

 soldiers from Devonshire House, and on 19 June, while preaching in the street at Ratcliffe because the meeting-house was barricaded against the quakers, he was arrested and carried before Justice Rycroft, who fined him 20l. On 8 July following Simpson set sail with John Burneyeat [q. v.] from Gravesend on a visit to Barbados. He died there of fever on 8 Feb. 1761, and was buried in a garden at Bridgetown, belonging to Richard Forstal, a quaker. Simpson was married, and a son survived him.

He published: 1. ‘A Declaration unto all, both Priests and People,’ 1655, 4to. 2. ‘A Declaration to all Rulers and People.’ 3. ‘From one who was moved … to go a Signe among the Priests and Professors of Christ's Words … naked from Salvation and Immortality, and as black as spiritual Ægyptians and Æthiopians,’ London, 1659, 4to. 4. ‘A Discovery of the Priests and Professors,’ 1660, 4to. 5. ‘Going naked a Signe,’ 1660, 4to, 1666, 4to, 1671.

[A Short Relation concerning the Life and Death of William Simpson by W. Fortescue, London, 1671, 4to, with additions by George Fox and others; Besse's Sufferings, i. 408–10, ii. 60, 61; Burneyeat's Journal; Smith's Cat. of Friends' Books, ii. 575; MSS. at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate Street.]

 SIMS, JAMES (1741–1820), physician, son of a dissenting minister, was born in co. Down in 1741, and, after a good preliminary education, was sent to Leyden, where he proceeded M.D. in 1764, presenting as his inaugural thesis ‘De Temperie Fœminea et Morbis inde oriundis,’ Leyden, 4to. He then returned to Ireland, and, after practising for a time in Tyrone, he removed to London, where he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians on 30 Sept. 1778. He was much helped by John Coakley Lettsom [q. v.], and soon acquired lucrative practice. He served as a physician to the General Dispensary in Aldersgate Street and to the Surrey Dispensary, and he was the first chairman and vice-president of the Philanthropic Society. The Humane Society, too, owed much of its early success to his energy. He served for twenty-two years as president of the Medical Society of London, and was displaced only by the strenuous exertions of the younger fellows. He had a valuable collection of books, which he made over to the Medical Society in 1802, in consideration of an annuity of 30l. a year to be paid to himself and his wife, and of 45l. annually to the survivor. He made a sufficient fortune to allow of his retiring to Bath in 1810. He died there in 1820.

Dr. Wadd says of him that ‘he was a good-humoured pleasant man, full of anecdote, an ample reservoir of good things, and for figures and facts a perfect chronicle of other times. He had a most retentive memory; but when that failed, he referred to a book of knowledge, from which he quoted with oracular authority.’

There is a good portrait of Sims painted by Samuel Medley (1769–1857) [q. v.] It was engraved by Nathan Branwhite [q. v.], and issued as a folding plate in the third volume of Dr. Lettsom's ‘Hints designed to promote Beneficence, Temperance, and Medical Science.’ The same volume contains a small silhouette of Dr. Sims. In Medley's picture of the Medical Society of London (at present in the society's rooms in Chandos Street, Cavendish Square), Dr. Sims is again pictured to the life, sitting in the presidential chair with a cocked hat upon his head. The picture was engraved by Branwhite.

Sims's works are: 1. ‘Observations on Epidemic Disorders, with Remarks on Nervous and Malignant Fevers,’ London, 8vo, 1773; 2nd edit. 1776; translated into German (Hamburg, 1775), and into French (Avignon, 12mo, 1778). 2. ‘A Discourse on the best methods of prosecuting Medical Enquiries,’ London, 8vo, 1774; 2nd edit. 1774; translated into French (Avignon, 12mo, 1778), and into Italian (Venice, 1786). 3. ‘Observations on the Scarlatina Anginosa, commonly called the Ulcerated Sore Throat,’ London, 8vo; 3rd edit. 1803; an American edition was published at Boston in 1796. Sims also completed and corrected Edward Foster's ‘Principles and Practice of Midwifery,’ 2 vols., London, 8vo, 1781.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 318; Clarke's Autobiographical Recollections of the Medical Profession, p. 228; Gent. Mag. 1820, i. 567; Wadd's Nugæ Chirurgicæ, p. 258. Additional information from the Records of the Medical Society of London, kindly given by Mr. W. R. Hall the registrar.]

 SIMS, JOHN (1749–1831), botanist and physician, was the son of R. C. Sims, M.D., a member of the Society of Friends, who for sixty years practised at Dunmow, Essex, and was the author of ‘An Essay on the Nature and Constitution of Man,’ London, 1793, 8vo, and of ‘The Constitution and Economy of Man's Nature,’ 1807, 12mo (cf., Friends' Books, ii. 576). John Sims was born at Canterbury in 1749, and was educated partly at Burford, Oxfordshire, and partly under his father, who was a good classical scholar. In 1770 he proceeded to the university of Edinburgh, and, after passing the session of 1773–4 at Leyden, graduated M.D. 