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Resource Name:
Resource Type:
External Resource
Metadata
Asset Name:
E001270 - Coote, Holmes (1815 - 1872)
Title:
Coote, Holmes (1815 - 1872)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E001270
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2011-07-21
Description:
Obituary for Coote, Holmes (1815 - 1872), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Coote, Holmes
Date of Birth:
10 November 1815
Date of Death:
December 1872
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS July 4th 1838

FRCS December 24th 1844
Details:
Born on November 10th, 1815, the second son of Richard Holmes Coote, of Lincoln's Inn, barrister-at-law, and one of the six conveyancing Counsel to the Court of Chancery. He was admitted to Westminster School on January 18th, 1826, and was apprenticed to Sir William Lawrence (qv) at St Bartholomew's Hospital, served as House Surgeon, and afterwards visited the schools of surgery in Paris and Vienna, becoming proficient in French and German. After qualification he was elected Demonstrator of Anatomy in the St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, where he continued to teach anatomy until he was elected Assistant Surgeon on June 7th, 1854, having previously contested an election for the post when A M McWhinnie (qv) was elected on May 14th, 1854. He gained the John Hunter Medal and Triennial Prize at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1845 for his essay "On the Anatomy of the Fibres of the Cerebrum, Cerebellum, and Spinal Cord in the Human Subject, together with the Origins of the Cerebral, Spinal, and Sympathetic Nerves, specially in the Lower Vertebrate Animals", and he published his first book in 1849 - *The Homologies of the Human Skeleton* - showing the influence of Richard Owen. While Assistant Surgeon he received leave in 1855 from the Governors of the Hospital to be absent as Civil Surgeon in charge of the wounded from the Crimean War in Smyrna and at Renkioi. He was elected Surgeon to the Hospital January 27th, 1864, and lectured for a time on comparative anatomy and afterwards, in 1865, on surgery conjointly with Sir James Paget. He married: (1) Jessie Blanche, daughter of John Herbert Roe, County Court Judge, on August 1st, 1848, and (2) Georgina Gordon, eldest daughter of Gordon Lorimer, of Lidsey Lodge, Sussex, and left issue. He was never in easy circumstances, nor attained much practice, and his widow was granted a pension from the Civil List by Mr Gladstone. His writings do not advance any novel modes of treatment, and some were intended to check the fervour with which excision of joints was being practised. He advanced sound principles of practice in diseases of the tongue, the thyroid, and joints, and his directions might always be followed as those of a cautious and discriminating surgeon. He died in December, 1872, of general paralysis with delusions of boundless wealth. His elder brother Richard (1814-1871), LLD Cantab, was a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Coote's portrait, that of a big burly man, hangs in the Anatomical Department of St Bartholomew's Medical College.
Sources:
*St Bart's Hosp. Rep.*, 1873, ix, pp. xxxix-xlvi

*Dict. Nat. Biog.*

Norman Moore's *History of St Bartholomew's Hospital*, ii, 677
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001200-E001299
Media Type:
Unknown