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Astley Cooper

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Sir
Astley Cooper
Bt GCH FRS
Astley Cooper by Thomas Lawrence
Born23 August 1768 (1768-08-23)
Brooke, Norfolk, England
Died12 February 1841 (1841-02-13) (aged 72)
London, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materSt. Thomas' Hospital
Known forotology
vascular surgery
human anatomy
AwardsCopley Medal (1801)
Scientific career
Fieldsanatomy

Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1st Baronet GCH FRS (23 August 1768 – 12 February 1841) was a British surgeon and anatomist, who made contributions to otology, vascular surgery, the anatomy and pathology of the mammary glands and testicles, and the pathology and surgery of hernia.[1]

Biography

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Astley Paston Cooper, c. 1825

Born at Brooke Hall in Brooke, Norfolk on 23 August 1768 and baptised at St. Peter's Church, Brooke,[2] on 9 September,[3] Astley Cooper was the son of the Rev Dr Samuel Cooper, a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother Maria Susanna Cooper née Bransby[4] wrote several epistolary novels.[5] At the age of sixteen he was sent to London and placed under Henry Cline (1750–1827), surgeon to St Thomas' Hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and had the privilege of attending the lectures of John Hunter. In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas' Hospital, where in 1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and surgery, and in 1800 he was appointed surgeon to Guy's Hospital on the death of his uncle, William Cooper.[6]

Astley Cooper received the Copley Medal in 1801 for two papers read before the Royal Society of London on the destruction of the tympanic membrane.[7][8] In February 1802 or February 1805 he was elected a Fellow of the Society.[9][10][11][need quotation to verify]

In 1805 he took an active part in the formation of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London and was its President in 1819. In 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second, part of his great work on hernia, which added so largely to his reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to 21,000 pounds sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of comparative anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a lecturer.[6]

In 1817 Cooper performed his famous operation of tying the abdominal aorta for aneurysm; and in 1820 he removed an infected wen (in more modern terminology, a sebaceous cyst) from the scalp of King George IV.[12][13] About six months afterwards he received a baronetcy, which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son, Astley Cooper.[6][14] He was appointed sergeant surgeon to George IV in 1828.[1] He served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1827 and again in 1836, and he was elected a vice-president of the Royal Society in 1830.[6] In 1821, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died on 12 February 1841 in London, and is interred, by his own desire, in the crypt of the Chapel of Thomas Guy, St Thomas Street (on the site now shared by King's College London and Guy's Hospital).[15] A statue by Edward Hodges Baily was erected in St Paul's Cathedral.[16]

Cooper lived at Gadebridge House in the market town of Hemel Hempstead.[17] Due to his influence and vigorous lobbying, supported by other residents of the area, a railway line was constructed in the 1830s by the London and Birmingham Railway to the south of the town[18] instead of directly through it. This led to the citizens of Hemel Hempstead having no railway station in their town.[19]

Legacy

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The importance of Sir Astley Cooper is remembered with a number of street names (Astley Cooper Place in the village of his birth, Brooke, Norfolk; Astley Road and Paston Road in Hemel Hempstead), and with The Astley Cooper School, formerly Grove Hill School, but renamed after him in 1984.[20][dead link][21]

Works

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In the field of vascular surgery and cerebral circulation, Cooper was the first to demonstrate experimentally the effects of bilateral ligation of the carotid arteries in dogs and to propose treatment of aneurysms by ligation of the vessel. In 1805 he published in the first volume of Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, an account of his attempt to tie the common carotid artery for treating an aneurysm in a patient. In 1808 he tried the same with the external iliac artery for a femoral aneurysm and in 1817 he ligated the aorta for an iliac aneurysm.[22]

Statue of Cooper, St Paul's Cathedral, London by Edward Hodges Baily

Cooper was an anatomist and identified several previously undescribed anatomical structures, many of which were named after him:

He also described a number of new diseases, which likewise became eponymous:

His chief published works were:

  • Anatomy and Surgical Treatment of Hernia (1804–1807);
  • Dislocations and Fractures (1822);
  • Lectures on Surgery (1824–1827);
  • Illustrations of Diseases of the Breast (1829);
  • Anatomy of the Thymus Gland (1832);
  • Anatomy of the Breast (1840).[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Bettany, George Thomas (1887). "Cooper, Astley Paston" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 137–139.
  2. ^ Batty Shaw, A. (1968). Barlow, George Hilaro; Babington, James P.; Cock, Edward; Birkett, Edmund Lloyd; Wilks, Samuel; Poland, Alfred (eds.). "Astley Cooper, his Norfolk origins and associations". Guy's Hospital Reports. 117 (1–4). London: S. Highley: 176. ISSN 0017-5889. Retrieved 19 September 2024. Astley Cooper's baptismal entry from the register of St. Peter's Church, Brooke.
  3. ^ Cooper, Bransby Blake (1843). The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Bart: Interspersed with Sketches from His Note-books of Distinguished Contemporary Characters. Vol. 1. London: J.W. Parker. p. 41. Retrieved 19 September 2024. His birthday was the 23rd of August, 1768, and he was baptized, as appears by the parish register, on the 9th day of the following month. His godfather was Sir Edward Astley, at that time member for the county [...].
  4. ^ Pitcher, Edward W. R. (2000). Discoveries in Periodicals, 1720-1820: Facts and Fictions. Studies in British and American magazines, Issue 7. Vol. 1. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. p. 150. ISBN 9780773478466. Retrieved 19 September 2024. Maria Susanna Cooper was a daughter of James Bransby of Shottiston, Norfolk, and married Samuel Cooper (1739-1800), who was the son of Samuel Cooper, surgeon in Norwich, and brother to William Cooper, surgeon in Guy's Hospital, London.
  5. ^ Nall, John Greaves (1867). Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft: Chapters on the Archaeology, Natural History, Etc., of the District; a History of the East Coast Herring Fishery. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. p. 76. Retrieved 19 September 2024. [...] the father and mother of Sir Astley Cooper, - the Rev. Samuel Cooper, eighteen years minister of Yarmouth, and Maria Susanna Bransby, his wife, both authors of many publications now forgotten.
  6. ^ a b c d e  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cooper, Sir Astley Paston". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 79.
  7. ^ "Copley Medal". The Royal Society. 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2024. Awarded in 1801
    Astley Paston Cooper
    For his Papers - on the effects which take place from the destruction of the Membrana Tympani of the Ear; with an account of an operation for the removal of a particular species of Deafness.
  8. ^ Forbes, John, ed. (July 1843). "The Life of Sir Astley Cooper Bart. [...] (book review)". The British and Foreign Medical Review or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery. Vol. 16. London: John Churchill. p. 131. Retrieved 27 September 2024. In the year 1800, he laid before the Royal Society his views with respect to the influence on audition, of perforation of the membrana tympani, and, in the following year, a second paper entitled 'Further observations on the effects which take place from the destruction of the membrana tympani; with an account of an operation for the removal of a particular species of deafness.' [...]
  9. ^ Cooper, Bransby Blake (1843). "1". The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Bart: Interspersed with Sketches from His Note-books of Distinguished Contemporary Characters. Vol. 2. London: John W. Parker. p. 10. Retrieved 27 September 2024. In the month of February, 1802, Mr Cooper was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
  10. ^ Forbes, John, ed. (July 1843). "The Life of Sir Astley Cooper Bart. [...] (book review)". The British and Foreign Medical Review or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery. Vol. 16. London: John Churchill. p. 131. Retrieved 27 September 2024. In February 1805, Astley Cooper was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
  11. ^ "Fellows Details". Royal Society. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  12. ^ Tesler, Ugo Filippo (2 January 2020) [2012]. "The history of vascular surgery". A History of Cardiac Surgery: An Adventurous Voyage from Antiquity to the Artificial Heart. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 290. ISBN 9781527544802. Retrieved 3 October 2024. The fame of Astley Cooper spread rapidly and it was only natural that in 1820 King George IV chose him to treat an infected sebaceous cyst of the scalp. The intervention was successful.
  13. ^ Bland-Sutton, John (1894). "Cysts, Adenoma, and Carcinoma of Sebaceous and Mucous Glands". Tumors, Innocent and Malignant: Their Clinical Features and Appropriate Treatment. London: Cassell. p. 238. Retrieved 3 October 2024. An excellent notion of the fears which surgeons entertained in regard to secondary complications after the removal of wens is furnished by the case of George IV., who had a sebaceous cyst on the top of his head. This formed the subject of a serious consultation attended by Cline, Astley Cooper, Brodie, and others. Eventually Cooper, with Cline's assistance, removed the wen [...].
  14. ^ "No. 17730". The London Gazette. 28 July 1821. p. 1555.
  15. ^ King's College London – The Guy's Chapel Archived 26 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine (Accessed 16 July 2013)
  16. ^ "Memorials of St Paul's Cathedral" Sinclair, W. p. 472: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
  17. ^ "Gadebridge House, Hemel Hempstead". Hertfordshire Genealogy. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
  18. ^ Smiles, Samuel (1858) [1857]. "25". The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer (5 ed.). Boston: Ticknor and Fields. pp. 293–295. Retrieved 10 October 2024. The line, as originally laid out, was to have [...] passed through Cashiobury and Grove Parks, the seats of Lord Essex and Lord Clarendon, and along the Hemel Hempstead and Little Goddesden valleys, in Hertfordshire. This latter portion of the project excited a vehement opposition on the part of the landowners, who formed a powerful confederacy against the bill. The principal parties who took and active part in the opposition were Lady Bridgewater and her trustees, Lord Essex and Sir Astley Cooper, supported by the Grand Junction Canal Company. By their influence the landowners throughout the counties of Hertford and Buckingham were completely organized in opposition to the measure. [...] Public meetings were held in most of the districts through which the line was projected to pass, under the presidency of the nobility and gentry, when it was unanimously determined that railways were wholly unnecessary. [...] The Hemel Hempstead and Goddesden valleys were [...] avoided, and the line proceeded by the towns of Berkhampstead and Tring.
  19. ^ "Astley Cooper: Surgeon to rich and famous". Dacorum Heritage Trust. Retrieved 14 April 2018.
  20. ^ "Astley Cooper's head wins top teacher title", hemeltoday.co.uk. Retrieved 8 July 2013
  21. ^ "The Astley Cooper School". Shenzhen Joysine Technology Co. 2024. Retrieved 16 October 2024. The Astley Cooper School is an English 11-18 comprehensive school on the edge of Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England. [...] The school was established in 1984 following a merger of two local schools, Grove Hill School and Highfield School. It occupies the former Grove Hill site on St Agnells Lane.
  22. ^ Chisholm 1911.

Sources

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Further reading

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Astley Cooper.
Wikisource has the text of The New Student's Reference Work article about "Astley Cooper".
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
New title Baronet
(of Gadebridge)
1821–1841 		Succeeded by
Astley Paston Cooper
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