Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/312

 COOLIDGE

COOPER

he favored the use of calomel. He was credited with saying " If calomel did not salivate, and opium did not con- stipate, there is no telling what we could do in the practice of physic."

It is interesting to note that one hold- ing such views could become the successor of Daniel Drake and continue so for a number of years.

In spite of strong opposition to these views from outside quarters, to which were added, as time passed, opposition within his school, he continued so to teach until he was pensioned by the facul- ty on the request of the students.

As an extreme example of his therapy, he administered thirteen tablespoonfuls of calomel in a case of cholera in the course of three days. The case termi- nated fatally, but he repeated the same in another case with a happier ending.

He died October 19, 1S53, of some chronic pulmonary disease, and in his last illness he bled himself copiously and purged himself thoroughly with calomel.

He wrote:

"Account of the Inflammatory Bilious Fever Which prevailed in the Summer and Fall of 1804 in the County of Loudoun, Virginia," 1805.

" A Treatise on Pathology and Thera- peutics," 2 vol., 1828.

" Essays on the Autumnal and Winter Epidemics," 1829. A. S.

The Life and Writings of John Eaten Cooke, by Lunsford P. Yandell, "American Practi- tioner," July, 1875.

Coolidge, Richard Hoffman (1820-1866). Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Richard Hoffman Coolidge, surgeon of the United States Army, studied medicine in New York and was commissioned assistant surgeon in the army in 1841. During the Mexican War he was assistant medical purveyor. In 1849 he was assigned to duty in the surgeon-general's office at Washington. Here he com- piled the " Statistical Report on the Sick- ness and Mortality in the Army of the United States from 1839 to 1855" and

the " Army Meteorological Register," published in 1855. He was also one of the co-editors of the American edition of Beck's "Medical Jurisprudence." In 1860 he was promoted to the rank of surgeon and appointed medical inspector in 1862, rendering meritorious services on the battlefields of South Mountain, second Bull Run, Gettysburg and Resaca, and in 1865 he was ordered as medical inspector of the department of North Carolina to Raleigh, where he died in the following year. Coolidge was a modest and courteous gentleman, loved by all his fellow officers. A. A.

N. York M. J., 1866, ii. Tr. Am. M. Ass., Phila., 1867, xviii.

Cooper, Elias Samuel (1822-1862).

Elias Samuel Cooper, surgeon and founder of the first medical college on the Pacific coast, was born in Somerville, Ohio, 1S22, a brother of Dr. Esaias Cooper of Galesburg, Illinois. He began to study medicine at the age of sixteen in Cincin- nati, Ohio, and received his M. D. from the St. Louis University, Missouri, first practising medicine in Danville, Illinois, but moving to Peoria in 1844. He was president of the Knox County, Illinois, Medical Society in 1S53 and spent the year 1854 visiting various European clinics. In 1855 he went to San Francisco, and in 1856 was instru- mental in organizing the Medical Society of the State of California.

He founded in San Francisco in 1858 the first medical college on the Pacific coast, known as the Medical Depart- ment of the University of the Pacific, which was afterwards re-organized as the Medical College of the Pacific and later as Cooper Medical College by his nephew Dr. Levi Cooper Lane. In 1860 he began publishing the "San Francisco Medical Press," a quarterly journal of medicine and surgery, edited after his death by Dr. L. C. Lane and Dr. Henry Gibbons. Most of his pub- lished writings appear in this journal and in the " Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal," the "California State