Elias Samuel Cooper / [Emmet Lane Rixford].

  • Rixford, Emmet Lane, 1904-
Date:
[1929]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Elias Samuel Cooper / [Emmet Lane Rixford]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS 1852, he was secretary of the Illinois State Medical Society, a member of the Committee on Legal Dissection in 1851 and 1852. In 1853 he was president of the Knox County Medical Society. He presented many papers; e.g., in 1851 he read a paper entitled “ Chloroform as an Anaesthetic Agent in 79 Surgical Operations,” and in 1852 one on “Treat¬ ment of Incomplete Ankylosis of the Knee Joint.” In 1854 he went to Europe visiting various clinics. In 1855 at the age of 33, Dr. Cooper went to California where he was almost immediately active in the organization of a state medical society. He was said to have been one of the committee who issued the invitation to the medical pro¬ fession to assemble for that purpose. At the first meeting, 1856, he offered the following preamble and resolution: Whereas, The laws of our State render surgeons obnoxious to prosecution and liable to heavy damages if they operate wrongfully, through ignorance, at the same time making no adequate legal provision for obtaining a knowledge of the human system; therefore, be it Resolved, That in view of the good of the profession, as well as the community, dissections should be legalized, under all proper restrictions. Resolved, That a committee of five (5) be appointed to memorialize the Legis¬ lature upon the subject. He also read a paper on “Gradual Obliteration of the Abdominal Aorta,” hav¬ ing devised an instrument for that purpose and used it with encouraging success in animal experimentation. One animal (dog) lived four days after the occlusion of the aorta was complete. At the second meeting, 1857, Dr. Cooper, being vice- president, presided in lieu of Dr. B. F. Keene (deceased) and gave the presidential address on “Deformities of the Locomotive Apparatus.” At the third meeting, in 1858, he read a paper on “Ligating the Satellite Veins in Connection with the Arteries which they Accompany,” reporting a case of ligation of the iliac artery with experimental ligation with and without ligation of the accompanying veins in some fifteen dogs. Dr. Cooper early sprang into prominence in California as a result of an opera¬ tion for the removal of the breech pin of a fowling piece from beneath the heart. He was the first to perform caesarean section in California and his patient sur¬ vived (two cases, in fact, the first leading to a most viciously fought malpractice suit, which, however, was finally won by Dr. Cooper). He declaimed against the accepted doctrine of the danger of the entrance of “atmosphere” into joints, advocated the wide opening and packing with lint of infected joints and those the seat of penetrating wounds. He successfully sutured the fractured olecranon and patella with silver wire, was an enthusiastic advocate of early functional demand in the fractures of the lower extremities, operated for club foot by cutting the contracted soft parts on the short side, as was done by Phelps of New York 40 years afterward, holding the foot subsequently in molded sheet lead, for plaster-