COOPER 307 brother met with an accident which tore open ' his thigh and wounded the artery, and young Astley saved his life before a surgeon could be j obtained by binding a handkerchief tightly above the wound. In 1784 he was sent to London to study under the direction of his uncle, William Cooper, the senior surgeon of Guy's hospital, who placed him under the care of Mr. Olive, surgeon of St. Thomas's hospital. At the age of 17 he was admitted a member of the physical society ; and having afterward spent some time in Edinburgh studying with Drs. Gregory and Cullen, he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St. Thomas's hos- pital. In 1791 he was associated with Mr. Olive in delivering the lectures on anatomy and surgery. The next year the lectures were divided, Clive confining himself to anatomy, while Cooper devoted himself exclusively to surgery. About this time he married a lady of fortune, and in 1792 he was appointed pro- fessor of anatomy at Surgeons' hall, and was reappointed in 1794 and 1795. His first lit- erary productions were two papers in a vol- ume of "Medical Records and Researches" (1798). On the death of his uncle in 1800 he succeeded him as surgeon of Guy's hospital. In this and the following year he read before the royal society two papers on the effect of destroying the membrane of the tympanum, with an account of an operation for the cure of a particular species of deafness, which won the Copley medal for 1802. In 1805 he was elected a fellow of the royal society, and the same year took a prominent part in the forma- tion of the medico-chirurgical society. Having devoted much attention to cases of hernia, he published in 1804 the first part and in 1807 the second part of his celebrated work on that subject. In 1806 he made the first attempt to put a ligature on the carotid artery, and though the case terminated unfavorably, it introduced a bold operation which has since proved suc- cessful in many cases. By this time his repu- tation was established, and in addition to his duties in the hospital and his numerous investi- gations in a laboratory and dissecting room of his own, he had one of the largest private practices ever enjoyed by a surgeon, his pro- fessional income for the year 1813 being no less than 21,000. He introduced a certainty and daring into surgical practice which was never before known. In 1817 he performed the bold- est operation ever recorded, that of tying up the subclavian aorta. It resulted unfavorably, but the circumstances justified the experiment. In 1818 he began the publication of a series of medical essays in conjunction with one of his pupils, Mr. Travers, but the plan was given up after two parts of the work had appeared. He was consulted by George IV. in 1820, and in the following year removed a tumor from the king's head, for which he was rewarded a few months later with a baronetcy. In 1822 appeared his work on "Dislocations and Frac- tures," which showed a great advance in the understanding and treatment of cases of this kind. In 1825 he was obliged from ill health to discontinue his lectures and resign the office of surgeon at Guy's hospital ; and the death of his wife in 1827 led him to give up practice and retire to his country estate at Gadesbridge. He soon tired of inactivity, and in 1828 returned to London, married again, and was appointed sergeant surgeon to the king. His health being in a great measure re- stored, he resumed his practice and his stu- dies, and in 1829 began the publication of his " Anatomy and Diseases of the Breast," which was not completed till 1840. In 1830 appeared a treatise on the "Structure and Diseases of the Testicle," and in 1832 one on the " Anat- omy of the Thymus Gland." He was elected president of the college of surgeons in 1827 and again in 1836, vice president of the royal so- ciety in 1830, and a member of the French institute in 1832 ; and among other honors he received the degrees of D. C. L. from Ox- ford and LL. D. from Edinburgh university. Though he lived expensively and is said to have been very generous to his poor relations, he left a fortune estimated at 500,000. He be- queathed 100 a year to be given every third year to the author of the best essay on some surgical subject. He was buried at his own request beneath the chapel of Guy's hospital. A colossal statue by Bailey has been erected to his memory in St. Paul's cathedral. His nephew, Bransby Blake Cooper, F. R. S., pub- lished a "Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Bart., in- terspersed with Sketches from his Note Book," &c. (2 vols., London, 1843). COOPER, James Fenimore, an American novel- ist, born at Burlington, N. J., Sept. 15, 1789, died at Cooperstown, N. Y., Sept. 14, 1851. His father was Judge William Cooper, a man of great energy and high social position, and his mother was the daughter of Richard Feni- more, who belonged to a New Jersey family of Swedish' descent. Judge Cooper, owning a large tract of land near Lake Otsego in cen- tral New York, established the settlement of Cooperstown, and moved thither with his fam- ily in 1790. In this wild frontier region the future novelist spent his boyhood. At the age of 13 he was sent to Yale college, but remained there only three years, when he entered the United States navy, where he continued six years, attaining the rank of lieutenant, and ac- quiring an experience which he found useful in his literary career. In 1811 he married a sister of Bishop De Lancey of western New York, and soon after resigned his commission and removed to Mamaroneck, a few miles from the city of New York. Declaring his belief that he could improve upon the popular novels of the day, he set about making the experiment, and produced " Precaution," a story of country life on the English model, which was published anonymously in 1819, at his own expense, and attracted little attention. In 1821 appeared " The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground." It
