Goat Glands, Carbolic Acid, and the City That Saved Surgery

Medicine didn’t leap from butchery to brilliance overnight — and it certainly didn’t happen in America first. In this episode of Dr. Simpson Unfiltered, I walk through Edinburgh’s legendary Surgeons’ Hall Museum to uncover how this city’s surgeons shaped modern medicine, from Simpson’s chloroform to Lister’s antisepsis — and why America lagged behind in a haze of goat-gland cures and miracle tonics. We’ll talk about why hucksters still thrive today, why “root cause” wellness is the same old grift in a lab coat, and why true innovation is never a quick fix but a hard, bloody climb toward evidence and humility.