Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/302

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COCKE 1

sent to America when he was fifteen, that he might receive the preparatory education necessary for admission to the medical department of Yale University where he afterwards took his M. D. After a course in Bellevue and Long Island College Hospitals he returned to the country of his parents' adoption. Cochran's knowledge of the Persian, Turkish and Syrian languages, with a slight knowledge of Kurdish gave him an influence he would not otherwise have had and made it possible for him to train native physicians. It was largely through his efforts that the Westminster Hospital was founded in 1SS0, with the Harvard annex in 1890. That Cochran was appreciated by Persians is shown by the Shah's gift of the decoration of the " Order of the Lion and the Sun," in 1SS0. That he gave his life generously to the people among whom he worked was seen in the sympathetic throngs of all races who attended his funeral when he died, August 15, 1905. M. K. K.

Cocke, James (1780-1813).

James Cocke, medical teacher and anatomist, was a native of lower Virginia and came from a wealthy and influen- tial family. He was born about 1780 and enjoyed superior advantages in being a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper, at Guy's Hospital, London. He graduated M. D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1804, when his thesis was " An Attempt to ascertain the Causes of the extraordinary inflammation which attacks wounded cavities and their contents." This at- tracted considerable attention from its bold and original views. In it he ably defended the propriety and practica- bility of ovariotomy, the first advocacy of this operation in America, according to Quinan. It was published a second time in 1806. He settled in Baltimore about the close of 1804, and entered into partnership with Dr. John B. Davidge early in 1S07, lecturing on physiology to the private class of medical students founded by the latter. With Drs. Davidge and John Shaw, he assisted in


n >CKE

founding the college of medicine of Mary- land, and later in advancing it to the rank of a university, in which he held the chair of anatomy from 1807 to his death in 1813. He died of fever October 25, at the very hour at which he was to have delivered the opening lecture of the course in the new building of the university. He was buried in Kent County, Maryland. He was a young physician of rare virtues and promise, and his loss was a most serious one to the Maryland profession and her rising university. In 1805 he reduced a dis- location of the humerus of seventeen weeks, and three days' standing, a feat that gave him great eclat. He possessed also marked business capacity and devised the ways and means for carrying on the work of the college. He married Elizabeth Smith of Kent County, Maryland. E. F. C.

Cocke, Dr. William (1672-1720).

William Cocke was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, England, of "reputable parents" in 1672 and educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, but it is not known in what year he came to Virginia. He was prob- ably a practitioner in Williamsburg in the early years of the eighteenth cen- tury, for he acquired the reputation of being "of undisputed skill in his pro- fession and of unbounded generosity in his practice."

For several years in the latter part of the reign of Queen Anne, and in the first of those of King George I (say, from 1710 to 1720) he was a member of the Colonial Council and secretary of state for the colony. He was "learn- ed and polite" and was held in high es- teem by the gentlemen of the colony, and by Alexander Spotswood, the Gov- ernor. He died suddenly in 1720 while sitting as judge in the General Court in the Capitol, and he was buried at the west side of the altar in Bruton Church at Williamsburg, in which is a tablet to his memory, from the inscrip- tion on which the facts here related are derived. R. M. S.