Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/271

NAME COOPER 249 COOPER tive matter burrowing in them is far more imperiously demanded than opening of other parts thus aiTected." 4. "There are no known limits beyond which a tendon will not or cannot be reproduced after division provided the parts are made to heal by granulation." Much of Dr. Cooper's operative success was doubtless due to his free use of alcohol on his instruments, etc. He successfully removed uterine myoma suprapubically ; ligated the innominate artery, the patient living forty days, dying then of secondary hemorrhage ; strongly advocated the use of silver wire for ununited fractures and successfully wired the fractured patella and olecranon, and removed a large sarcoma of the clavicle, taking away a portion of the sternum. It is of particular interest at this time to note that in the first annual announcement published of the medical department of the University of the Pacific (1859) Cooper offered a course in operative surgery on ani- mals as a valuable means of instruction in surgery and in which the students were re- quired to pass an examination. Of his own experiments on dogs the admitting of air into the jugular vein and subsequently resuscitat- ing the dog by aspiration of the air from the ventricle is not the least remarkable. Cooper ligated the abdominal aorta in a number of dogs, but they all dying, he devised an instrument for the gradual obliteration of the abdominal aorta. The dog on which the instrument was tried lived four days after the artery was completely closed, this being accom- plished gradually during seven days. In sub- sequent dissection Dr. Cooper found evidences of the establishment of collateral circulation. Dr. Cooper announced a new cure for aneurysm consisting of cutting down on the sac and sewing it up from the outside, and reported a case of popliteal aneurysm cured in this way. He advocated the ligation of arteries with their accompanying veins as being less dangerous than ligation of the veins alone, and reported the successful ligation of the external iliac artery and vein. He also re- ported the effective reproduction of a tendon destroyed for four inches of its length by laying open its sheath, permitting the inter- val to fill by means of granulation tissue. He operated for club-foot by cutting all con- tracted soft parts down to the bone, much as was later done by Phelps (q. v.) of New York. After wrenching the club-foot into proper po- sition be held it by moulding heavy sheet lead about it. Emmet Rixford. San Francisco Med. Press, 1862, vol. iii. Cooper, James G. James G. Cooper, physician, naturalist and explorer, is remembered chiefly for his work with the Pacific Railroad Expedition, 1853- 1857. He spent two years and three months in Washington Territory, and six weeks in California, and went through Kansas and Nebraska as far as Fort Laramie. With George Suckley (q. v.) he wrote "The Natural History of Washington Territory, with much relating to Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oregon, and California. . . ." (1859) He was author of "Geographical Catalogue of the Mollusca Found West of the Rocky Mountains. . . ." (1867). Cooper, Thomas (1759-1839) Thomas Cooper, for twelve years president of the University of South Carolina, natural- ist, politician and writer, was an Englishman who believed in individual thinking and free speech, a stormy petrel who found it best to flit to the land of the free and settle in Penn- sylvania in 1795. He was born in London, October 22, 1759, was educated at Oxford and subsequently studied law and medicine, receiv- ing the M. D. degree ; he was admitted to the Bar and travelled a circuit for a few years. Being sent to France by the democratic clubs of England to similar clubs there, he sided with the Girondists and was called to account for this by Mr. Burke in the House of Com- mons, Cooper replying with a violent pamphlet. While in France he learned to make chlorine from common salt and on his return became an unsuccessful calico-printer at Manchester. He established himself as a lawyer in Penn- sylvania in 1795, allied himself with the demo- crats and attacked President Adams in a news- paper article in 1799; was tried for libel and sentenced to six months imprisonment and a fine of four hundred dollars. A little later he was made a judge in Lucerne County, but was removed for arbitrary conduct in 1811. As a personal friend of Thomas Jefferson he supported his administration and the admin- istrations of Madison and Monroe. He be- came professor of chemistry in Dickinson College and then was elected professor in the newly established University of Virginia, but was soon forced to resign, because of his religious views. This was previous to December 3, 1819, when he was selected to succeed Professor E. D. Smith in the chair of chemistry in the South Carolina College at Columbia, then fifteen years old and having a faculty of five and a student body of one hundred. In two years, on the death of Presi-