The period of his arrival in London had been of course fixed with reference to the opening of the professional season—viz. in the month of October, when the lectures on medicine, surgery, anatomy, physiology, and their kindred sciences, commence at the hospitals, and, in some few instances, elsewhere. Mr Cline's house was in Jefferies' Square, St Mary Axe, in the eastern part of the metropolis; and in that house Mr Astley Cooper afterwards began himself to practise. His propensities for fun and frivolity burst out afresh the moment that he was established in his new quarters; and for some time he seemed on the point of being sucked into the vortex of dissipation, to perish in it. He quickly found himself in the midst of a host of young companions similarly disposed with himself, and began to indulge in those extravagances which had earned him notoriety in the country. One of his earliest adventures was the habiting himself in the uniform of an officer, and swaggering in it about town. One day, while thus masquerading, he lit upon his uncle in Bond Street; and, finding it too late to escape, resolved to brazen the matter out. Mr Cooper at once addressed him very sternly on his foolish conduct, but was thunderstruck at the reception which he met with.
"Astley, regarding him with feigned astonishment, and changing his voice, replied, that he must be making some mistake, for he did not understand to whom or what he was alluding. 'Why,' said Mr Cooper, 'you don't mean to say that you are not my nephew, Astley Cooper?' 'Really, sir, I have not the pleasure of knowing any such person. My name is —— of the —th,' replied the young scapegrace, naming, with unflinching boldness, the regiment of which he wore the uniform. Mr William Cooper apologised, although still unable to feel assured he was not being duped, and, bowing, passed on."—(P. 401.)
As soon as the lecture-rooms were opened, young Cooper made a show of attention, but without feeling any real interest in them. His uncle, at the same time, (2d Oct., 1784,) proposed him as a member of the Physical Society, into which, on the 16th of the same month, he was admitted. This was the oldest and most distinguished society of the kind in London, numbering among its supporters and frequenters nearly all the leading members of the profession, who communicated and discussed topics on professional subjects at its meetings. The rules were very strict: and we find our newly admitted friend infringing them on the very first meeting ensuing that on which he had been introduced, as appears by the following entry in the journal of the society,—"October 23d, 1784. Mr &c., in the chair. Messrs Astley Cooper, &c., &c., fined sixpence each, for leaving the room without permission of the president."[44]
It is hardly to be wondered at that so young and inexperienced a person should have found attendance at the meetings of the society very irksome; them matters discussed being necessarily beyond his comprehension. We find, therefore, that during the first session he was continually fined for nonattendance. The first paper which he communicated was, singularly enough, on cancer in the breast—a subject to which, throughout his life, he paid great attention, and on which he was earnestly engaged when death terminated his labours.[45] Whether he had selected this subject himself, or any one else had suggested it, does not appear; but the coincidence is curious and interesting. A very few months after Astley's introduction to the profession, he found the yoke of his stern and rigid uncle too heavy for him; and, in compliance with his own request, he was transferred as a pupil to Mr Cline, at the ensuing Christmas, (1784.) From that moment his character and conduct underwent a signal change for the better. This was partly to be traced to the stimulus which he derived from the superior fame of his new teacher, and the engaging character of his instructions and professional example. Certain, however, it is, that Astley Cooper had become quite a new man. "After six months," says he himself,[46] "I was articled to Mr Cline; and now I began to go into the dissecting-room, and to acquire knowledge, though still in a desultory way." His biographer states that "Astley Cooper seems at once to have thrown away his idleness, and all those trifling pursuits which had seduced him from his studies; and at the same time to have devoted himself to the acquisition of professional knowledge, as well by diligent labour in the dissecting-room, as by serious attention to the lectures on anatomy, and other subjects of study in the hospitals."[47] He had, at this time, barely entered his seventeenth year; and such was the rapidity of his progress that, by the ensuing spring, (1785,) he had become as distinguished for industry as formerly he had been notorious for idleness, and had obtained a knowledge of anatomy far surpassing that of any fellow-student of his own standing.[48] His biographer institutes an interesting comparison between Astley Cooper and the great John Hunter, at the period of their respectively commencing their professional studies. Both of them threatened, by their idle and dissipated conduct, to ruin their prospects, and blight the hopes of their friends; both, however, quickly reformed, and became pre-eminent for their devotion to the acquisition of professional knowledge, exhibiting many points of similarity in their noble pursuit of science. Astley Cooper, however, never disgraced his superior birth and station, by the coarser species of dissipation in which it would seem that the illustrious Hunter had once indulged—for illustrious indeed, as a physiologist and anatomist, was John Hunter; a powerful and original thinker, and an indefatigable searcher after physical truth. Mr Cline had the merit of being one of the earliest to appreciate the views of this distinguished philosopher, whose doctrines were long in making their way;[49] and Mr Cline's sagacious opinion on this subject, exercised a marked and beneficial influence on the mind of his gifted pupil, Astley Cooper. During Astley Cooper's second year of professional study, (1785-6,) he continued to make extraordinarily rapid progress in the study of anatomy, to which he had devoted himself with increasing energy; and his efforts, and his progress, attracted the attention of all who came within his sphere of action. From a very early period he saw, either by his own sagacity, or through that of his skilful and experienced tutor, Mr Cline, that an exact and familiar knowledge of anatomy was the only solid foundation on which to rest the superstructure of surgical skill.
"We now find him," says his biographer, "devoting himself with the most earnest activity to the acquisition of a knowledge of anatomy,—one of the most valuable departments of study to which the younger student can devote himself, and without a thorough knowledge of which, professional practice, whether in the hands of the surgeon or physician, can be little better than mere empiricism. The intense application which Astley Cooper devoted to this pursuit, in the early years of his pupilage, was not only useful, inasmuch as it furnished him with a correct knowledge of the structure of the human frame,—the form and situation of its various parts, and the varieties in position to which they are occasionally liable,—but it paved the way for those numerous discoveries made by him in 'pathological anatomy,' which have already been, and must continue to be, the sources of so many advantages in the practice of our profession."—(Pp. 117-118.)
He was chiefly stimulated to exertion in this department by the ambition to become a "demonstrator" of anatomy in the dissecting-room—an office greatly coveted, being "the first public professional capacity in which anatomical teachers of this country are engaged."[50] Mr Cooper thus clearly indicates the duties of this important functionary:—
"There is scarcely any science, in the early study of which constant advice is so much required as in the study of anatomy. The textures which it is the business of the young anatomist to unravel are so delicate and complicated,—the filaments composing them so fine, and yet so important, that in following them from their sources to their places of destination, and tracing their various connexions, he is constantly in danger of overlooking or destroying some, and becoming bewildered in the investigation and pursuit of others. To direct and render assistance to the inexperienced student under these difficulties, it is the custom for one or more accomplished anatomists, Demonstrators as they are styled, to be constantly at hand."—(Pp. 119-120.)
At the time of which we are speaking, a Mr Haighton, afterwards better known in the profession as Dr Haighton, was the demonstrator in the school presided over by Mr Cline; but he was extremely unpopular among the students, on account of his coarse repulsive manner and violent temper. Young Cooper's great affability and good nature, added to his known connexion with Mr Cline, his constant attendance in the dissecting-room, and his evident superiority in anatomical knowledge, caused him to be gradually more and more consulted by the students, instead of Mr Haighton, who was greatly his superior in years. Astley Cooper perfectly appreciated his position. "I was a great favourite," says he,[51] "with the students, because I was affable, and showed that I was desirous of communicating what information I could, while Mr Haighton was the reverse of this." Astley Cooper knew that, in the event of Mr Haighton's surrendering his post, he himself was already in a position to aspire to be his successor, from his personal qualifications, his popularity, his growing reputation, and the influence which he derived through his uncle Mr Cooper and Mr Cline. Yet was the ambitious young anatomist barely in his eighteenth year!
Feeling the ground pretty firm beneath him—that he had already "become an efficient anatomist," he began to attend Mr Cline in his visits to the patients in the hospital; exhibiting a watchful scrutiny on every such occasion, making notes of the cases, and seizing every opportunity which presented itself of testing the accuracy of Mr Cline's and his own conclusions, by means of post-mortem examinations. At the Physical Society, also, he had turned over quite a new leaf, being absent at only one meeting during the session, and taking so active a part in the business of the Society, that he was chosen one of the managing committee. At the close of his second session,—viz. in the summer of 1786—he went home as usual to Yarmouth, and was received by his exulting parents and friends with all the admiration which the rising young surgeon could have desired. His mother thus expresses herself in one of her letters to him at this time, in terms which the affectionate son must have cherished as precious indeed:—
"I cannot express the delight you gave your father and me, my dearest Astley, by the tenderness of your attentions, and the variety of your attainments. You seem to have improved every moment of your time, and to have soared not only beyond our expectations, but to the utmost height of our wishes. How much did it gratify me to observe the very great resemblance in person and mind you bear to your angelic sister!—the same sweet smile of complacency and affection, the same ever wakeful attention to alleviate pain and to communicate pleasure! Heaven grant that you may as much resemble her in every Christian grace as you do in every moral virtue."—(P. 134.)