COOPER 2
Journal of Medicine" (1S56) and the "Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California" (1S58).
Cooper was a bold, enthusiastic and original surgeon who, soon after his arrival in San Francisco, gained a repu- tation as a daring operator by a sensa- tional operation in which he successfully removed a breech-pin of a fowling piece from beneath the heart.
He announced a number of new surg- ical principles of which the following may be mentioned:
1. "Atmosphere admitted into joints or other tissues is not a source of irrita- tion or injury except where it acts me- chanically as in veins, the thorax, or in the abdomen, reducing temperature."
2. "The only true mode of treating ul- ceration of bone within a joint is to lay the joint open freely, keeping it open by packing with lint."
3. " Opening of joints early in case of infective matter burrowing in them is far more imperiously demanded than open- ing of other parts thus affected."
4. "There are no known limits beyond which a tendon will not or cannot be re- produced 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 alco- hol on his instruments, on his hands and on the parts to be operated upon, and for purposes of irrigation after operation.
He successfully removed uterine myoma suprapubically ; ligated the in- nominate artery, the patient living forty days, dying then of secondary hemor- rhage; strongly advocated the use of sil- ver wire for ununited fractures and suc- cessfully wired the fractured patella and olecranon, and removed a large sarcoma of the clavicle, taking away a large por- tion of the sternum.
It is of particular interest at this time- to note that in tin' first annual announce- ment published of the medical depart- ment of the University of the Pacific (1859) Cooper offered a course in oper- ative surgery on animals as a valuable means of instruction in surgery and in
t COOPER
which the students were required to pass an examination. Of his own experi- ments on dogs the admitting of air into the jugular vein and subsequently re- suscitating the dog by aspiration of the air from the ventricle is not least re- markable.
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 accomplish- ed gradually during seven days. In subsequent dissection Dr. Cooper found evidences of the establishment of collat- eral 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 accompany- ing 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 reported the effective reproduction of a tendon de- stroyed for four inches of its length by lay- ing open its sheath, permitting the inter- val to fill by means of granulation tissue. He operated for club-foot by cutting all contracted soft parts down to the bone, much as was later done by Phelps of New York. After wrenching the club- foot into proper position he held it by moulding heavy sheet lead about it. E. R. San Francisco filed. Press, L862, vol, iii.
Cooper, "William D. (1820-1897).
William D. Cooper, physician, was the son of Leroy D. Cooper, a farmer of Cul- peper County, Virginia, and born in that county on December 28, 1820.
He was educated in the schools of his native county, and for several year was himself a teacher in the local schools. In 1842 he began to study medicine with a physician, and in 1845 graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, then
