performed a small operation upon him. This was followed by the bestowal of a baronetcy.
It was not till 1822 that Cooper became an examiner at the College of Surgeons, publishing in the same year his valuable work on ‘Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints.’ In January 1825 he resigned his lectureship at St. Thomas's; but finding that he was to be succeeded by Mr. South as anatomical lecturer, contrary to his understanding that his nephew, Bransby Cooper, was to be appointed, he induced Mr. Harrison, the treasurer of Guy's, to found a separate medical school at Guy's, with Aston Key and Bransby Cooper as lecturers on surgery and anatomy respectively. St. Thomas's claimed the valuable specimens Cooper had deposited there to illustrate his lectures, and the latter vigorously set about making a new collection. His energy and name, although he now became consulting surgeon to Guy's, and seldom lectured, started the new school successfully.
In 1827 Cooper was president of the College of Surgeons. In 1828 he was appointed surgeon to the king. He had for some years spent much time at his estate at Gadesbridge, near Hemel Hempstead. From 1825 he took his home farm into his own hands, and one of his experiments was buying lame or ill-fed horses in Smithfield cheaply and feeding and doctoring them himself, often turning them into much better animals. Lady Cooper's death in 1827 was a heavy blow to him, and he resolved to retire altogether from practice. By the end of the year, however, he returned to his profession, and in July 1828 married Miss C. Jones. The publication of further important works occupied him, and in 1836 he was a second time president of the College of Surgeons. He died on 12 Feb. 1841, in his seventy-third year, in Conduit Street, where he had practised latterly, and was buried, by his express desire, beneath the chapel of Guy's Hospital. He left no family, his only daughter having died in infancy. The baronetcy fell to his nephew, Astley, by special remainder.
A statue of Cooper, by Baily, was erected, chiefly by members of the medical profession, in St. Paul's Cathedral, near the southern entrance. An admirable portrait of him by Sir Thomas Lawrence exists. His name is commemorated by the triennial prize of three hundred pounds, which he established for the best original essay on a professional subject, to be adjudged by the physicians and surgeons of Guy's, who may not themselves compete.
No surgeon before or since has filled so large a space in the public eye as Cooper. He appears to have had a singularly shrewd knowledge of himself, as evidenced by the following quotations from an estimate he left, written in the third person (Life, ii. 474–6). ‘Sir Astley Cooper was a good anatomist, but never was a good operator where delicacy was required.’ Here, no doubt, Cooper does himself injustice. ‘Quickness of perception was his forte, for he saw the nature of disease in an instant, and often gave offence by pouncing at once upon his opinion … He had an excellent and useful memory. In judgment he was very inferior to Mr. Cline in all the affairs of life … His principle in practice was never to suffer any who consulted him to quit him without giving them satisfaction on the nature and proper treatment of their case.’ His success was due to markedly pleasing manners, a good memory, innumerable dissections and post-mortem examinations, and a remarkable power of inspiring confidence in patients and students. His connection with the resurrectionists and the marvellous operations attributed to him combined to fascinate the public mind to an extraordinary degree. A great portion of his practice was really medical, and in this department his treatment was very simple. ‘Give me,’ he would say, ‘opium, tartarised antimony, sulphate of magnesia, calomel, and bark, and I would ask for little else.’ He had a genuine, even an overweening, love for his profession. ‘When a man is too old to study, he is too old to be an examiner,’ was one of his expressions; ‘and if I laid my head upon my pillow at night without having dissected something in the day, I should think I had lost that day.’ He cannot be classed among men of genius or even of truly scientific attainments; his works are not classics, but they are more than respectable. They are defective especially from their almost entire omission to refer to the works of others. The ‘Quarterly Review’ (lxxi. 560) terms him ‘a shrewd, intelligent man, of robust vigorous faculties, sharp set on the world and its interests.’
Mr. Travers, who became Cooper's articled pupil in 1800, says at that time he had the handsomest, most intelligent and finely formed countenance he ever saw. He wore his hair powdered, with a queue; his hair was dark, and he always had a glow of colour in his cheeks. He was remarkably upright, and moved with grace, vigour, and elasticity. His voice was clear and silvery, his manner cheerily conversational, without attempt at oratory. He spoke with a rather broad Norfolk twang, often enlivened with a short ‘Ha! ha!’ and, when he said anything which he thought droll, would give a very peculiar short snort and rub his nose with the back
